Myriad acquires social networking specialist Xumii

LONDON — Myriad Group AG has acquired the brand, technology and 17 employees of privately-held Xumii Inc., a provider of mobile social networking services based in San Mateo, California and Sydney, Australia.

Using a 'cloud computing' architecture, Xumii integrates a mobile user's phone contacts, social networks and instant messaging services into a single 'social phonebook'. Mobile users can then simultaneously access Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Google.

“Xumii was the first software developer to combine social networks and instant messaging into a seamless mobile experience,” said Simon Wilkinson, CEO of Myriad (Zurich, Switzerland).

Myriad was created from the combination of Esmertec and Purple Labs and has shipped software in more than 2 billion devices. It also develops USSD-based customer self-care platforms that deliver over 5 billion messages a year to 157 million mobile users across more than 30 mobile operators worldwide.

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