Yellix Dials In to Mobile Social Networking

This morning I received an e-mail from Claudia Poepperl, previously of mobilePeople, regarding the first product to come out of her new company, Adaffix. Known as Yellix, it’s a mobile app that identifies incoming calls with Facebook information of the caller (if they happen to be a Facebook friend).

As the mobile Web is gaining traction and as mobile social networking is a top category, this taps into an area where there is growing engagement. It also further mobilizes social media by tying an existing social graph to something as common as phone calls. The idea is that Facebook status updates add contextual “conversation starter” to phone conversations, possibly driving some sort of location-based activity.

This will in fact be tied to local business information that is searchable and served when contextually relevant to the content of incoming callers’ status updates. As we’ve learned from Twitter and Facebook, the stuff of the “statusphere” often involves the local establishments (think bars, restaurants) around which status updates occur. This is also in line with the move we’re starting to see toward local “discovery” apps (subject of forthcoming BIA/Kelsey report).

Poepperl had the following to say about the app:

We believe that YELLIX is the most natural evolutionary element to add to telephony, and brings the whole experience of phone calling into a new era. Adding relevant content to calls in real time in a useful and non-intrusive way will soon be something every cellphone users expects as a standard functionality. Relevant content can be anything from user generated Web 2.0 content (i.e. Facebook) to local content. YELLIX will open up a completely new distribution channel for data of yellow pages publishers: calls. In Austria we have already launched a YELLIX feature which attaches local content to calls automatically. A list of numbers of e.g. other pharmacies in the same area will instantly appear on the cellphone display if you cannot get through to the pharmacy you call.

To get the free app, users have to sign up for it on Facebook (where preferences are managed) and install the Yellix app on their device. Supported devices, according to the press release, include BlackBerry, HTC, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Palm, Samsung and SonyEricsson phones that run Android, RIM BlackBerry, Symbian S60 or Windows Mobile.

For more check out the Yellix site and the promo video.