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"FriendsTribe, which launches today in invite-only beta, is a mobile social network from New York-based Luxinteract Inc.  The service works everywhere in the US, they say, since it relies on text messaging.  Among the features: tag your favorite venues (restaurants, clubs), upload images and video clips, create events and invite your friends from your cellphone.  \nWhat's more, there's a keyword system that lets you request information from the service: send an SMS message to 87130 and include words like \"GROUP\" (send message to group), \"AT\" (send your location to friends), \"GET\" (get the location of your friends) or \"BLOG\" to interact with Friendstribe.  If you forget any of these keywords, you can text \"KEYWORD\" to see the full list.  Text messaging is the smartest way to create mobile social networks, since it ensures there aren't any compatibility issues - these keyword systems are becoming common.  Another neat feature allows you to set a radius for the messages you receive - only receive messages from friends who are within a 15 mile radius, for instance.  \nOn the site itself, users have profile pages with a photo, a network of friends, a collection of their recent photos and videos and even friends of friends.  You can also explore photo galleries of certain locations - photos of New York, for instance, are sent via SMS to a special email address.  Likewise, you can explore venues and see them plotted on a Google Map, read blog entries and browse events.  Further down the line, they plan to add band pages, ala MySpace Music or Bebo Bands.  Perhaps there would also be an overlap with Mozes or Broadtexter, which allow fans to get updated on their favorite bands via text messaging.\nFriendstribe is off to a good start - the basic features are there, the interface is acceptable, but they've yet to add anything that really makes them stand out from the crowd.  It's also worth asking whether mobile social networks should really be standalone, or whether they'd be better as an addition to an existing network.  MySpace Mobile, for instance, is said to be ramping up over the next few months, while YouTube Mobile is expected in 2007.  \nFor these new networks, the two options seem to be: build a large audience in a certain locale and get acquired based on the size of that audience or (more likely) get acquired by an existing service that wants to integrate mobile into its offering.  Unlike web-based social networks, however, mobile socnets are still relatively scarce, meaning that there's less competition.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/11/27/friendstribe-launches-mobile-social-network/>