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France Telecom Group/Orange mobile social networking service

The challenge

France Telecom Group/Orange sought to place "social networking at the heart of its mobile business" by deploying a pan-European mobile social networking service. The operator wanted to provide subscribers with an aggregated social networking experience via a WAP site that brought together key information and features from social networks most popular in each country deploying the service. The business objectives were to increase data traffic and foster subscriber loyalty.

Our solution

France Telecom Group/Orange chose NewBay LifeCache Social Networking Gateway (SNG) to power the mobile social networking service and deliver on its objectives.

LifeCache SNG provided a single integration point for the France Telecom Group/Orange to connect to multiple social networks, including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5 and Meetic. The technology enabled subscribers to instantly upload photos and videos, and interact with multiple online sites of their choice, through a user-friendly interface.

The result

The LifeCache powered mobile social networking service is currently deployed by Orange Spain (MySocialPlace - launched June 2009), Orange UK (Social Life - launched August 2009) and Optimus in Portugal (LifeShare - launched October 2009).

Analysts consider the mobile social networking service to provide a powerful business development tool for the operator, and predict that many more operators will deploy similar services in the near future.

"Orange is one of the very first operators to aggregate social networking sites and give people a simple way of managing and organizing multiple accounts from one place," Paolo Pescatore, CSS Insight. "I expect other operators to offer similar products. Operators will benefit from increased data traffic and advertising opportunities. More importantly, it may help to retain subscribers as social networking continues to spread in 2009 and beyond." [1]

In March 2010, Orange UK's Social Life won the best 'Innovative Service' award in the Mobile News Awards. The judges described the service as:

"another great innovation from Orange
that's aimed at the growing social networking market."

[1] http://www.ccsinsight.com/blog/?p=419