VeriSign Unveils New Solution for Social Networking

VeriSign (News - Alert) Messaging and Mobile Media, both of which provide Internet infrastructure services, announced the release of VeriSign Xoomerang, a mobile media solution aimed at carriers.

 

Xoomerang is designed to address the growing number of mobile consumers who want to use online social networking and media destinations and are a looking for an easy-to-use interface.

 

“Social networking is positioned to be the next big opportunity for the wireless industry, but to unlock its full potential requires not only improvements in the mobile user experience but also solutions that leverage the existing operator infrastructure,” said Warren Faleiro, vice president of multimedia applications for VeriSign's messaging and mobile media division, in a statement.

 

VeriSign said the Xoomerang solution offers special user experience for publishing and consuming media, while facilitating immediate user adoption via a carrier's existing infrastructure.

 

VeriSign seeks to utilize its relationships with carriers globally that want to offer social networking and media services for millions of users.

 

For instance, YouTube (News - Alert) is one of the online destinations available via Xoomerang. VeriSign will enable mobile users to easily upload and share video clips on YouTube's site through their mobile devices.

 

The entry of Xoomerang comes at a time when the online social networking's growth worldwide is significant. A recent Gartner (News - Alert) study found that about 180 million mobile users worldwide in 2008 use some form of mobile social networking service weekly. Adoption is projected to increase to more than 800 million by 2012, the report added.

 

“Using Xoomerang, wireless operators can immediately connect their subscribers to a host of destinations while also providing an enhanced user experience,” Faleiro added.

 

How does Xoomerang contribute to the growth of social networking sites? VeriSign said  the Xoomerang's Media Interexchange catalog management tool allows carriers to program pre-integrated destination sites available to users from a master catalog of connected sites and to configure custom places.

 

“Users can then personalize their account by choosing favorite destinations from either a handset or on the Web,” the company said. “As new destinations are added to the catalog, subscribers are automatically alerted both on the Internet and by text message.”