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In-Brief: A round up of news including a close look at a potentially disruptive social network.

NEW SOCIAL NETWORK/MARKETPLACE: Read between the lines here and you can see this is much more than a social network spanning fixed and soon mobile networks. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the same Silicon Valley law firm behind giants Google, YouTube and Apple, has launched Dirtbag Music, a social music network that provides free video and voice calls for every user, a complete e-commerce engine to monetize online digital content and a suite of mobile apps to connect artists and fans.

The site’s P2P network utilizes VoIP functionality and an instant messaging system called Blab Box to interact in real-time through video sessions, personalized lessons, chats, concerts, interviews, rehearsals, tour bus updates and other reality-based campaigns. When Dirtbag is fully implemented in late spring, it will also provide individualized e-commerce platforms, like eBay, allowing each member to choose what content they want to monetize and how. The current beta version works on desktops and laptops running Windows OS. However, Blab Box will also be available as a downloadable mobile phone app soon.

Sensing this is not just another social network, I caught up with John Alves, Dirtbag CEO, for a quick chat. I was right. Dirtbag cleverly combines telephony and content creation/distribution tools to create much more than a community; it is laying the groundwork for a ubiquitous marketplace that allows individual commerce and communication between artists and fans. With advisory board members as diverse as Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian, Hip-Hop artist DJ Skribble and Guns N’ Roses guitarist Ron Thal, Dirtbag is serious about “providing an advanced form of interaction and monetization for all artists and for all genres of music.” John told me the company has some exciting news to report following its debut at the National Association of Music Merchants’ (NAMM) annual convention last week, so count on me to circle back with an in-depth interview soon.

INDIAN NEWCOMER: India’s Bigadda.com has big plans for the future, according to this post. The social networking site, which was launched last August and counts 1.24 million users, is gearing up to go mobile. The company reckons the move will help grow the user base to 10 million by 2010. Siddhartha Roy, Bigadda COO, is quoted as saying that the site adds “12,000 to 15,000 users a day.” Some other interesting stats: The Bigadda user base in India’s top 20 cities account for half of its users, while 40 percent come from smaller towns.

JAIKU: It’s been radio silence since Google snapped up Jaiku a few months back, and a string of bugs and “service issues” gave every indication Jaiku was soon to be history. But this worthwhile post from ReadWriteWeb provides an update on what Google has in store for this microblogging service, and documents it with a recent blog post from Jaiku co-founder Jyri Engeström. Beyond apologies for the poor performance, Jyri tells us Jaiku is “already making progress on what I think are some cool new ways to help you stay connected with the people you care about. We can’t share any of the specifics right now, but stay tuned.”

The guess is that some of this cool stuff doesn’t involve microblogging or presence at all. As the author correctly points out, Jaiku’s USP is its ability to “aggregate and automatically republish stories from other activity streams: blog posts, del.icio.us links, Flickr photos, even Twitter updates.” An activity stream aggregator may sound like an application in search of a use case now, but if the industry moves on data portability and if the results trickle down to mobile, then Jaiku could sit at the center of a much larger Google scheme to export data, bypass mobile operators’ garden walls and usher in a new social Web.

MYXER LAUNCH: Myxer - which provides ad-supported mobile content and a platform that enables users to create their own content and move it between the Web and their mobile devices - has officially launched its European operations. The U.K. team will focus on further expanding the Myxer catalogue to include more U.K.-based independent bands and labels, as well as working with U.K. content providers and advertisers to leverage the Myxer platform as a commercial tool to help promote new artists or consumer brands.

In a nutshell, the Myxer platform allows any website to deliver existing audio, video or image files to any Web-compatible mobile device by converting page content into mobile products, such as ringtones, wallpapers or video clips. The content is then made available from the originating website, a dynamically-generated mobile website, SMS or the Myxer catalogue. Myxer lets content providers offer content from their own websites, MySpace pages or from the Myxer website. Additionally, Myxer delivers unified ad campaigns - from PC to mobile - and enables the delivery of content or customized ad campaigns, regardless of the service provider or mobile device being used.

SNOCKLES LAUNCH: Snockles, a mobile social messaging service based in India, has taken the wraps off its public beta version in India and in the U.K., according to this post. Strikingly similar to Twitter, Snockles lets users broadcast messages to all their friends at once via the Internet as well as from mobile phones. As the website explains: “A Snockle is a message that you post on your own Snockline (a.k.a. message board) which is broadcast to all the people who are tracking you. Similarly, you receive Snockles from people whom you are tracking. Snockles can also be sent and received via SMS after you register your mobile phone.” The service is free (data charges apply) and will be available soon to users in Australia, Singapore, South Africa and a few European countries through the U.K. gateway.

PHOTOBUCKET: Fox Interactive Media (FIM) continues to roll out mobile sites of its digital properties. Following the debut of the ad-supported mobile version of MySpace, Photobucket, an Internet hub for managing personal media, has announced the launch of Photobucket Mobile. The service, which can be accessed via http://m.photobucket.com, lets users browse existing personal and public Photobucket content directly from mobile devices; upload photos and videos to Photobucket from mobile devices; share photos and graphics with individuals via email from mobile devices; search Photobucket’s photos and graphics; and view a variety of featured photos and images every day from the Photobucket Mobile home page. Future additions to Photobucket Mobile will include viewing, sharing and searching for video, embedding content on social networking sites from mobile devices, and accessing linked tags on third party sites.

• Posted in
• Mobile Social Networking, Web 2.0, Mobile Search, Mobile Music, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Content Discovery

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