Google buying mobile social network service Zingku

Google continued its march into the mobile market today with its acquisition of mobile social networking platform Zingku. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to Google Operating System, Zingku first announced the deal on its website--Google later confirmed the acquisition, stating "We believe these assets can help build products and features that will benefit our users, advertisers and publishers."

The Zingku platform enables subscribers to create and exchange images, invitations and "mobile flyers" with friends via standard text and photo messaging features. The service integrates a user's mobile phone with a personalized website, enabling subscribers to "zing" content back and forth between PCs and handsets.

In May 2005, Google acquired mobile social networking service Dodgeball--two years later, Dodgeball co-founders Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert announced their resignations from the search giant. "It's no real secret that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected," Crowley posted in a blog entry following the announcement. "The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us--especially as we couldn't convince them that Dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space."

For more on the Google/Zingku deal:
- read this Google Operating System article

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