Bridge Social Networks With Your Mobile Content

By Geoff Spick | Published Apr 23, 2009

It is increasingly common to see updates on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter come from people using their mobile devices. Vufone is a new service from NewACT that makes accessing and managing messages, photos and video across a range of social sites a one-stop task.

Share and Sync on the go

Just launched worldwide, vufone is a mobile-meets-social web service. It allows you to post photo and video content from your mobile to a number of social networking sites from a common interface. Currently, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Gmail are supported with Twitter and YouTube being added soon.

A more practical use, for business users, is that Outlook and Gmail calendar dates, contacts and tasks can be synchronized with the phone to keep you in touch and up to date.

Going the other way, text messages, phone calendar tasks, and photos and videos can be stored online using the backup feature. With mobile theft a major threat, having that data kept somewhere else will be a small relief if the problem ever hits you.

The price for all this interactivity is US$ 9.99 for a year — a special offer for the rest of April. After April vuphone will cost US$ 19.99. Supported phones include most Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Mototola, HTC and BlackBerry devices. Apple is an obvious omission from the list — vufone tells us that an App is in development and due within weeks.

Supporting Java, Windows Mobile, Symbian and other types of phone only helps to widen the appeal of this service.

vufone interface.jpg
vufone - Transfer content between social site and your phone

A Swiss-Army Knife for your Phone?

Another feature is the ability to send text messages over the service using the web, instead of racking up extra phone charges. Vufone can also be used to transfer music while the MyPersona function will have your picture appear on a friend's phone when you call them.

Also, having used the service to backup your data, if you then get a new phone you have an easy way to copy the data back over to your new device.

As Rafi Ton, CEO of vufone, puts it “For most mobile phone users, their handset isn’t just a phone – it’s a camera, a social networking tool, a personal organiser and a source of entertainment. It’s the centre for a lot of life’s activities. People want to unify their various online identities and all of the content they generate for both work and play easily, quickly and without compromising on security.”

vufone - simplifies adding images to social sites

With multimedia mobile devices becoming ubiquitous and a huge increase in their use for sending social updates, the importance of rapid interaction between site and phone is growing.

By combining several useful features like sending content, syncing information and backing up, vufone (or similar tools) could cross a number of niche markets to become a powerful breed of application.