Kyte Nabs $15M for Mobile Social Network

Mobile social-networking startup Kyte on Thursday said it got $15 million in funding from Spanish carrier Telefonica, Japan's NTT DoCoMo, and Nokia Growth Partners.

The funding, which pushed San Francisco-based Kyte's tally to $17.2 million, is the second venture capital investment in a U.S.-based mobile social-networking startup this week. Juice Wireless on Monday scored $6 million in what is now a mobile social-networking spending spree. (see Juice Taps $6M from Mobile-Funding Geyser)

Venture capitalists pumped $431.2 million into 92 mobile social-networking companies in the first three quarters of 2007, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association Moneytree.

But none of these firms have yet made a dent in the promising, but revenue-challenged, market.

"The market does not feel that crowded to us because frankly there are few services, no revenues, no users, and no one has yet established a footprint in the market," Kyte CEO Daniel Graf said.

Despite an industry trend toward open mobile networks in the United States, access to customers is still controlled by carriers and will be controlled by them at least for a few more years, Mr. Graf said, so Kyte will seek out carrier partners.

"There is a very high entry barrier related to carriers and device manufacturers and that's why we have teamed up with Telefonica, DoCoMo, and Nokia in this round," Mr. Graf said.

Kyte markets a multimedia service that allows mobile phone users to share video, pictures, music, or text that can be posted on web sites such as MySpace, blogs, or broadcast to other mobile phones.

The company is hoping to attract media companies and artists to create embedded interactive channels and produce multimedia shows from their mobile phones while on the road.

redherring.com