Bluepulse

Where it's based: San Mateo, Calif.
When it was founded: 2006
Website: www.bluepulse.com [1]

Why it's fierce: Creating the unified mailbox is a dream of many wireless startups. But what if Google's former director of engineering was heading up the team of engineers working on just such an application? What if this mobile social messenger already facilitated 150 million messages per month (2,000 per minute) and counted users in more than 198 countries? As the next generation of consumers drives the trend of broadcasting and multicasting messages to friends and the world alike, Bluepulse looks to be the platform that takes that trend mobile. Bluepulse claims that its application already works on more than 1 billion mobile phones and is focused on helping friends communicate with each other better, unlike other mobile social networks that help users discover new people to chat with on the mobile Web.

What to look for: Watch for Bluepulse to leverage its new CTO (Chris Nguyen, former director of engineering at Google) to build advanced features and forge key partnerships with other application developers.