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Vringo, the pioneer in video ringtone sharing, and WeeWorld, home of the popular WeeMee social network, have announced an alliance to fully integrate WeeWorld avatars into Vringo’s video ringtone service. The announcement was made at LeWeb3 2007.

WeeWorld is a rapidly growing and trusted online community focused on self-expression and communication for young adults. Millions of die-hard fans use WeeMees as their personal avatar or icon to express what they are doing, thinking and feeling. On WeeWorld, users create their WeeMees, decorate their own personal space, play games and hang out with other WeeMees.

Using Vringo, mobile phone users worldwide can now seamlessly load their WeeMee avatars onto their mobile handsets for free. When a call is placed, an animated WeeMee appears on the recipient’s phone screen as a video ringtone, or Vringo, graphically identifying the caller. Users will also be able to personalize their mobile handsets by selecting WeeMee avatars as wallpaper that appears on handset screens when idle.

“WeeMees are all about unique self expression,” said Celia Francis, CEO of WeeWorld. “We developed our API to make it really easy for Web and application developers to bring that self expression into their products. Through our partnership with Vringo, WeeMee users will be able to share the WeeMee one-of-kind experience whenever they call another Vringo user. We’re excited to be able to offer our subscribers another way to integrate their WeeMee personality into their mobile lives.”

With the WeeWorld-Vringo alliance, users can now simply and easily deploy their WeeMees on a wide variety of mobile handsets, including devices made by Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and others. This means that the WeeMee avatars users post as digital IDs on their favorite social media Web sites and instant messaging services can now be shared on yet another “screen”—the highly portable mobile-phone screen.

Vringo investors include Daniel Ciporin, Jonathan Medved and Warburg Pincus.

Weeworld investors include Interactive Telecom Solutions, Balderton Capital, Accel Partners and Balderton Capital.

www.weeworld.com

Tags: Accel Partners, Balderton Capital, Interactive Telecom Solutions, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Vringo, Warburg Pincus, WeeWorld

As Apple and its network partner O2 gear themselves up for the long awaited UK launch of the iPhone, Google is preparing a mobile strike of its own. The G-Phone is not a handset like the iPhone, but is an open software platform designed to give mobile handsets easier and faster access to Google services such as search and mail. As Google’s stock rises above $700 on the speculation, the expectation is that Google will come clean tomorrow with an announcement that is likely to revolutionise the entire mobile industry.

Codenamed ‘Android’ the new platform is expected to incorporate software from the Linux world and involve more than 30 of the biggest names in the mobile industry including NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Qualcomm, Broadcom, HTC, Intel, Samsung, Motorola, Sprint, and Texas Instruments.

With very deep pockets and backed by industry giants, Google certainly has the means to deliver a true mobile computer. Indeed Android could turn the industry on its head by moving away from subscription services towards ad paid free services.

Tags: Apple, Broadcom, Google, HTC, Intel, KDDI, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sprint, Texas Instruments