March 12th, 2008eComm08 – Coolest App I’ve seen yet? Vringo Facebook Sync
And it’s a pretty simple one. Vringo does things like video ringtones and kitchy personalization bits for phones. A good enough business one might imagine. But Andrew Perlman, from Vringo was talking up something today IMHO much cooler today. A Facebook app that syncs all your contacts on facebook with all your contacts on your mobile, keeps it up to date, and shows your friends current profile picture when they call. Awesome. Sign me up. Maybe the first actually useful facebook app ever? And it’s mobile.
Another interesting tidbit from his talk? their monetization strategy is ad-supported and freemium. We live in a temporary stage where there is a scarcity of supply for mobile ads, CPMs as high as $80 on mobile. The moment they announced their product, even pre-users the phone was ringing from mobile media buyers. Presumably this is a UK story. A little ahead of Canada they are.
Update: Oops I lied, the app, or rather facebook, won’t let you export personal information of your contacts from facebook. What the Vringo app does is let you match up your existing mobile contacts with your contacts on facebook to sync elements like the profile photo.
