Bluepulse 2.0 is Bigger, Slicker, Broader and Deeper (and may be the ultimate mobile media platform)

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Go Blue I’ve been waiting about 3 months to make this announcement. Three months of keeping a secret to myself (as well as waiting impatiently) to get a first look at the newly released bluepulse 2.0 For those of you that have been reading MobileCrunch since near the beginning, you’ll recall my prognostication that bluepulse would be one of the first big and important companies of Mobile 2.0. A year later and I still hold the same opinion. Maybe now a few of my readers will too.
Who’s Blue?The company has been nothing if not unique. Their fair haired wunderkind (give me a break I’m writing this from Amsterdam where the weather sucks and it’s 5:18AM) 24 year old soon to be Aussie ex-pat Ben Keighran exudes equal parts charm, intelligence, passion and a sort of bravado that would be annoying if it weren’t so totally unaffected. He has the confidence of a “man on a mission” and he’s unabashed in saying that he’s not interested in simply building a company; he wants to “change the world”.
So far his path has been unusual to say the least. The stuff of podcasts and legends to be precise and hopefully he and I will pull it together to do one in short order. In any case the cliff notes of his path to bluepulse 2.0 includes the unthinkable act of turning down not one but something along the order of 5 term sheets from a who’s who of Valley VC’s only to return to Australia to focus on building something that would get him the valuation he wanted.
Now, 6 months later he’s back with a vengeance and bluepulse 2.0 does not disappoint. If you liked bluepulse 0.9 you stand to be pleasantly surprised. Everything you liked, from the ability to switch widgets on the fly to the speedy and data sparing applications like traffic cameras, buddy lists and the newer flickr, digg and gmail widgets are there as before.
The interface however has done some radical growing up and the changes are all highly positive yielding a much cleaner, slicker and more mature feeling application that has none of the original feeling of being a bit…well…young. No, this new bluepulse interface looks sharp and professional through and through right down to a redesigned logo.
Feel BlueThe download and installation process has been streamlined and doesn’t even require that you know what phone you have. Since one of bluepulse’s claims to fame is its ability to install on virtually any phone, you can pretty well count on yours accepting the code with only one “installation of this un-trusted application could break your phone warning”. Just hit continue. It hasn’t broken any phones yet.
Looking at bluepulse 2.0 in its totality you’re really facing a pretty significant leap forward in mobile application platforms. And make no mistake about it, this is a full fledged mobile multimedia platform that allows users to create a detailed user profile including photos and videos, an ever growing array of mobile widgets that help you do everything from checking the traffic or surf to planning what you’re going to watch on the tele tonight (plus digg, flickr, gmail and more), as well as chat in various chat rooms while browsing your new friends “places” while chatting, and last but not least, bluepulse has its own built in messaging application that allows you to text friends AND broadcast messages.
I’ve seen quite a number of mobile applications in the last twelve months and many have been very comprehensive but I do not believe that I’ve seen a single platform that had as many different functions as bluepulse 2.0; especially not one with the diversity of widgets or the ability to run on so many phones.
Finding your friends on bluepulse is as easy as searching their phone number, name or email address and sending them a friend request. The bluepulse team has also endeavored to make it as easy as possible to get your lame friends that aren’t already on bluepulse to get a clue and join up. You can send ‘em a free sms with instructions on how to find you and send you a friend request - what could be easier? Even the perennially un-hip should be able to handle this.
Of course it should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, bluepulse 2.0 is free as are all the widgets. You can get the new version by visiting http://get.bluepulse.com.
In case you missed it there are two things here that make this important; the first is the sheer number of phones bluepulse works on and how good the experience is across the range. Substantially the same from top to bottom save for some viewable area and depth of color (or complete lack of color in some phones). This is vitally important to carriers who need to squeeze every last dime of data revenue they can from phones and whom are dying a thousand deaths when old phones don’t die but just get handed down.
It’s a dirty secret that the vast majority of the phones still don’t deliver much in the way of data revenues to carriers so bad is the user experience. Bluepulse can fix this and make smartphone-like data experiences nearly universally available. Carrier problem solved.
The second sneaky brilliant thing is a combination of the user profiles and the broadcast messaging capability. Can you say highly targeted broadcast mobile advertising anyone? I knew Ben could.
From my perspective all this is really cool. My main concern is one that I have voiced many times, to Ben and on this blog. The need to download and install an off deck application is a dicey proposition at best. If anyone in the US can make a go of it, bluepulse will be the application but it is still a risky strategy and one that I counseled against for fear that they won’t get the traction they need to move up in the world.
I guess time will tell us the answer to that question. At least until they get acquired by some media conglomerate owned by an old guy with a weird name. Take your pick there sure are enough of em; Rupert, Sumner, Barry? See what I mean.
Blue For YouIn the mean time check it out and let Ben know what you think he really does want to know. Honest. Oh, and if you liked this piece please digg it. Thanks.
By the way, bluepulse’s digg widget lets you read the news, log in and digg stories, read & moderate comments and blog & email stories straight from the widget - The only mobile version of Digg with these features!
Tags: mobile media platform, mobile2.0, bluepulse2.0, widgets, mobilecrunch, oliverstarr Categories: Announcements, Analysis, bluepulse Bookmark this post with del.icio.us