Following in Tencent QQ's Footsteps, Mobile Community mig33 Proves There is Real Money in Developing Markets

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Mar 30, 2010, 12:01 ET

SINGAPORE, March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Over the past six months, mig33, the world's largest mobile community, has rapidly broadened its offerings into social entertainment, including the launch of social games, user-owned groups, gifting and, most recently, avatars. Today, mig33 -- now with more than 40 million registered users -- announced the results of these initiatives, highlighting that average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) has grown to over US$1/month in countries such as Indonesia and India.

mig33's recent efforts were designed with two purposes in mind: to propel the popular mobile chat community into a full-fledged mobile Social Entertainment Service (SES) and, in tandem, lay the foundation for a thriving virtual economy. This model is based on China's Tencent QQ (QQ) which, with near 8% of its over 500 million users in China paying about $2/month, has grown to be a $38bn listed company.

However, while QQ has thrived within China, mig33 is growing by bringing mobile community and entertainment to the billions of consumers who reside in developing and/or mobile-first markets like Indonesia, India, South Africa, Bangladesh, Kenya, Bosnia and many more.

The company noted that its users are now sending well over 1 million virtual gifts a month, and posting approximately 100 million messages a day on its network, or 1,000 messages every second. By comparison, Twitter users are now estimated to share about 50 million tweets per day.(1)

In the last month, mig33 also launched avatars, which allow users to customize their avatar to one of many possible variations. The sale of avatars is a primary source of revenue for QQ, as well as for Mobagetown, a popular site run by Japan's DeNA.

"Delivering avatars to our users is the latest step in a long string of initiatives to broaden our proposition to our markets, and in the march to become QQ for the rest of the world," said Steven Goh, CEO and founder of mig33. "Our unique combination of services and payment model, is delivering ARPU's as high as a few dollars per paying user from some of the least developed part of the world without ourselves having to maintain a physical presence. It's significant that not only are these results comparable to many of the successful Social Entertainment Services in East Asia and North America, we're achieving these results from some of the least developed countries in the world and where average incomes are in the mere hundreds of dollars per month. These countries include Indonesia, India, Kenya, Bosnia, and many others. With the rest of the world in our sights, and with companies such as QQ and DeNA grounded in their respective countries, I'm more excited about mig33 and our opportunities than ever before."

About mig33

mig33 is the world's largest mobile-first community, providing social communications and entertainment for more than 40 million members and their mobile devices worldwide. With mig33, members in more than 200 countries engage in vibrant chat communities, share photos, send gifts, play games, post on each others profiles, join groups, create avatars and much more. The service is available worldwide and optimized for more than 2,000 handsets. Founded in 2005, mig33 is backed by Silicon Valley venture firms Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures and DCM. For more information, please visit www.mig33.com.

(1) http://blog.twitter.com/2010/02/measuring-tweets.html

SOURCE mig33