As a follow-up to my post "Zumobi Introduces Ad-Supported Social Media iPhone App, I spoke with John SanGiovanni, Co-Founder, Vice President, Product Design today to get an update on the company's strategic direction and new Ziibii iPhone app.

Bottom line is that while Zumobi supports other platforms (BlackBerry, Windows Mobile), it is really betting on ad-sponsored iPhone apps for future growth. The company is also betting on its new Ziibii social media iPhone app, which it believe combines a visually engaging product, built-in inventory and cross-pollination opportunities. Zumobi will not monetize Ziibii until Q1 2009. Until then it will be using its river UI for feedback and comments. It has plans to launch several brand experiences early next year, but would not comment on the specific brands. Remains to be seen how effective social media is for advertising, however, it is certainly a nut that agencies and brands would like to crack.

CitySearch, an online local guide, today launched in Beta its new Mobile by CitySearch. New mobile functionality includes ability to post reviews from mobile phones and ability to share business listings via text-to-phone capabilities. The new site is also supposed to improve the mobile browsing experience, including enabling an optimized, personalized experience based upon the device type (key attributes, content layout, keystrokes and navigation). In mobile, the ability to maximize the UI based upon the individual user's device type is really key. Quality content and integration with the user's location information will also be key to driving a superior local mobile search experience.

Launched yesterday on AT&T's Media Mall, the "VH1 Watch and Discuss Live Chat" mobile IM application is an example of how media companies are looking to integrate mobile with traditional media and leverage key community elements. The downloadable app from Mobui lets VH1 viewers chat real-time with friends, other viewers and on-air talent/hosts via a number of different programming-specific, user-defined and celebrity chat rooms. Mobile elements also include viral SMS send to a friend functionality.

The app as I see it has lots of challenges, including limited distribution via AT&T and the price point. The app costs $7.99 for a one-time download or $2.99 monthly. If the utility of the app is partially tied to traditional media consumption, then I will be near my computer with access to (free) online chat/IM services. This may translate into limited utility and willingness to pay. Just wondering if I'm missing something on the use cases in mobile.

Mobile social community itsmy.com has turned to mobile search engine Taptu to give its users access to a "super-fast search service" and an index of mobile-friendly Web sites.

Taptu focuses largely on entertainment, helping users find mobile videos, music, images and such. The integration means that itsmy users can now search for their mobile entertainment from within the community and from their personal itsmy mobile home page.

The partnership also means that itsmy can make money from advertising thanks to Taptu's sponsored mobile search links.
According to Taptu CEO Steve Ives, mobile search advertising "offers far greater efficiency" and delivers a better ROI than other forms of mobile marketing.

Mobile UGC site Zedge has hooked up with Smaato to add advertising to its community site. Zedge.net claims 11 million users of its site, which offers free content and content creation tools. The integration of Smaato's SOMA platform means that it can now maximize its mobile ad revenue and ROI, the companies say.

Smaato's SOMA platform features an advertising exchange for mobile publishers and developers. The company partners with some 20 mobile ad networks, whose inventory it aggregates into the SOMA solution.

ROK Entertainment Group and mobile media start-up YuuZoo said that YuuROK, their joint ad-supported mobile social network, now has more than 300,000 registered users. The service is apparently on target to top a million users in the next few months and three million within a year. According to its parents, YuuROK is getting some 20,000 new sign-ups a day worldwide.

YuuROK's main service is free, ad-funded e-mail that's supposed to deliver a BlackBerry-like experience to any WAP-enabled phone. Other YuuROK features include e-books, daily news and sports feeds, comics and other community goodies.

Next up for the social network is something called GeeSpark, which lets users send images and YouTube videos to each other directly from their phones.

Cellufun, ad-funded mobile gaming community, is starting the Halloween celebration a couple weeks early. Members can play new "Hellofun" Halloween-themed games, decorate their homepages, dress their avatars in costume and even hand out goodies to community trick-or-treaters.

In the commercial, candy-filled spirit of Halloween, users can line up at the homepage "front doors" of other members; there's even a list generated of the most generous givers. Users who forget to head to their virtual home and hand out the goodies will find rumors spread about their stinginess. Like in the real world, you have to first buy the candy to hand out, only in this mobile virtual world, you spend Cellupoints, not cash.

While at MCME, I had the chance to sit down for a few minutes with Mikael Vinding, founder and CEO of JYGY, the mobile social network whose members can create their own social apps on the fly. Because Mikael (aka the Chief JYGYnaut) had such a great experience at the conference he gave me some scoop. Well, maybe it was just because he was ready to go public with the news, but I prefer to think it was the former.

The JYGY service has been live in the US for five or six months, and it's set to go international. In the next six-eight weeks, folks in the UK, Canada and Australia should be able to get JYGY with each other as well as their friends in the States. This means free cross-country texting and content sharing from their mobiles, regardless of network or handset type.

Next up will be an expansion into Europe and South America. I wasn't able to drag any countries or launch dates out of Mikael before he had to head back to Atlanta.

Also, like with the US service, ads will probably crop up on the sites at some point, but the plan is to keep JYGY totally free for now.

Love her or hate her, you have to admit that Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin has given the media some interesting sound bites in the brief time that she's been in the public eye.

Not a company to let any sort of opportunity pass it by, FunMobility is doing its part to spread the Palin-isms far and wide. On its FunMo portal, the mobile content outfit has some free hip-hop-style ringtones featuring remixes of Palin's most memorable quotes.

The six ringtones have titles like "Foreign Policy Experience," derived from Palin's comments on Alaska and Russia and "Lipstick on a Pig," which depicts her pride as a hockey mom.

UK mobile carrier 3 has teamed with mobile apps portal GetJar to offer its users more than 10,000 free applications including Google Maps, Yahoo Go, eBuddy, mig33, Mywaves and thousands of others. As with most "free" app stores, some of the GetJar content is freeware, some is demo versions and some is ad-supported.

GetJar is available on Java, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm and BlackBerry handsets plus any others that support Flash Lite. Later this year it intends to come out with a catalog of Android applications.