Vodafone 360 a Bold move

Vodafone 360, a social connected address book initiative is a very ambitious and a bold move by the operator. I guess this is the first time an operator is introducing a service that can work across different network. It’s a mix of cloud computing and rich multi media messaging. Maybe we can call it as “Cloud computing 2.0”. The 360 initiative is riding on the acquisition of Zyb, a mobile location and address book syncup startup that was acquired by Vodafone last year. With Vodafone 360, customer’s contacts, status updates and messaging services are brought together in one place enhancing the customer’s experience and use of social media. Customers will have integrated contacts, music, photos and mapping services and can share their favorite music choices and even their physical location, how and when they choose, with their chosen groups of friends. In addition, there will an app store similar to iPhone app store. ( I had written about Social Address book sometime last year, here is the link check out Part1 and Part2 of the article.)


Here are some of the features of Vodafone 360:

• Vodafone 360 is a brand new set of internet services for the mobile and PC which gathers all of a customer’s friends, communities, entertainment and personal favourites (like music, games, photos and video) in one place
• At its heart Vodafone 360 has the most personal address book available, bringing together all of the contacts from the mobile phone, social networks and other internet accounts. It works across a range of mobile phones, including the new, exclusive Vodafone 360 phones, and synchs automatically with the PC
• Connected address book – Vodafone People, open to everyone on any network across over 100 popular mobile phones, automatically synchs all contacts from a customer’s phone, Facebook®, Windows Live Messenger™ and Google Talk™, and will soon also include Twitter, Hyves and studiVZ
• New suite of internet services accessible on multiple handsets as well as PC or Mac, including a wide range of apps, games, music and mapping services

Vodafone 360 suite of services has been designed and developed by Vodafone on top of Limo operating system. At launch the full Vodafone 360 experience will be available on two exclusive handsets built to Vodafone’s specification by Samsung.

It will be interesting to see if Vodafone has any plans to launch this service for customers in US. I would definitely try the service if launched in USA.