iSkoot Partners with O2 Ireland to Launch O2 Social Link

New O2 Application Connects Ireland’s Mobile Users to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Mobile customers in Ireland now have an easy way to stay connected to leading social media like Facebook®, Twitter®, and MySpace™. iSkoot today announced that it has partnered with O2 Ireland to launch O2 Social Link, a rich mobile app that aggregates the most important Social Network services, along with some of Ireland’s most popular feeds for news, sports, and entertainment.

O2 Social Link offers users real-time notification for social network activity and news items, even while users compose messages, check status updates, and read new stories. All services are delivered over available data connections, without requiring 3G or Wi-Fi for optimal performance. When not actively in use, O2 Social Link’s server-side connection can continue to load new data in the background and pop up alerts for important content.

“Alongside texting, e-mail and instant messaging, Social Networks are rapidly becoming important media for interpersonal communications,” said Alan Fox, Head of Consumer Marketing at O2. “O2’s goal is to enrich all our customer’s communications, whether contract or Pre-pay, Smartphone or even more basic feature phone users. With more than 70 handset models supported, O2 Social Link is accessible to much of our customer base and keeps our users in touch with their online communities, in real time, from a single screen on their O2 phone.”

O2 Social Link is powered by iSkoot’s Kalaida™ platform, a cloud-based solution that gives wireless operators and OEMs worldwide the ability to easily integrate leading web-based services into their consumer offerings. Kalaida concentrates processing in the network, allowing multiple services to remain active at once with minimal impact on handset performance or battery life.

“O2 Ireland fully understands the value that real-time social media brings to mobile customers, and iSkoot is honored to have the opportunity to help bring that vision to market,” said Mark Jacobstein, CEO of iSkoot. “iSkoot’s social media experience has had tremendous success with mobile operators in North America, and O2 Ireland is the perfect partner for this European launch.”

iSkoot’s Kalaida Platform currently connects mobile subscribers in the US, Europe, and Asia to leading social media, e-mail, IM, VoIP and news services, and is rapidly extensible to support local preferences and add new services as users embrace them.

O2 Social Link is currently available to O2 Ireland users on nearly 50 top devices by HTC, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. The application is available free to Prepay customers on the O2 Experience Plus and O2 Experience More price plans, and can be downloaded at no cost when users top up their account by €20 in one go every 30 days.

For more information on iSkoot services and solutions visit: http://www.iskoot.com/.

About iSkoot

San Francisco-based iSkoot, Inc. works closely with mobile network operators to bring leading internet services like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and more to mobile handsets around the world. iSkoot's Kalaida Platform brings the power of cloud computing to virtually any consumer mobile device and gives carriers the ability to deliver compelling interactive experiences with minimal impact on network and handset performance.

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.

CONTACT:

iSkoot
Jake Martin, 310-293-7046
jake@iskoot.com

KEYWORDS:   United States  Europe  North America  California  Ireland

INDUSTRY KEYWORDS:   Technology  Internet  Telecommunications  Mobile/Wireless  Social Media  Communications

MEDIA: