We’ve been already talking about Myriad’s efforts to bring social networking services to users in the emerging markets. Their solution doesn’t require fancy smartphones, and will work on a number of basic feature phones, potentially increasing ARPU for the mobile networks.
Now Myriad is announcing three new carrier partners — Vodafone, Orange and Mobinil — which will be able to utilize the Myriad Updates service to bring Facebook and Twitter to those places where folks can’t access popular social networks from their phones.
And the scheme is apparently already working, with one unspecified carrier reporting more than 50,000 paying subscribers signing up for the service. In that sense, Myriad believes it’s well on track to deliver social networking services to over 1 billion mobile users by the end of 2012.
Powered by Myriad’s mobile social networking platform, Xumii, Myriad Updates presents a person’s social network activity on the screen as text using the USSD bearer, thus enabling users to stay connected without having to install an app or requiring a data plan…