Vodafone gets social with Zyb acquisition

The social networking bandwagon got a little more crowded Friday morning as Vodafone announced plans to acquire Danish social networking firm Zyb for Eur31.5m in cash.

Zyb is a little different from the MySpaces and Facebooks of the social networking world however, in that its focus is on enabling users to back up and share their handset’s calendar, messages, contact information and the like online.

It sounds an awful lot like O2’s recently launched Bluebook service, which automatically backs up all data sent to and from the handset.

Services like this are the first step in portability of user data between devices, but what the industry is really crying out for is a platform that allows for portability of data between service providers and operators.

Voda said Zyb would increase communication choices for its customers by enabling them to send messages and images from their PC to multiple mobile devices in their mobile community, as well as taking advantage of the functionality of an instant messaging service.

Pieter Knook, internet services director for Vodafone Group, said: “Vodafone understands that the core of any customer’s personal and business network is the set of contacts they hold on their mobile phone. Using a web portal as a link between the PC and the mobile device, Zyb provides an interactive way for people to nurture, contact and develop their relationships with their most important friends and colleagues and builds links with those contacts’ wider networks. This is Web 2.0 in action.”