Yahoo! Europe (Nasdaq:YHOO) and CellPoint Systems AB, a subsidiary of CellPoint Inc. (NASD:CLPT), today announced that they have signed an agreement to co-market a person-to-person locator service for mobile phones.
The service is called `Yahoo! Find-A-Friend' and is a fast, easy and fun new way of keeping in touch with friends and colleagues. Using CellPoint's Finder! technology, Yahoo! Find-A-Friend allows users to actually pinpoint the location of the friend or colleague they are trying to contact.
Yahoo! Europe and CellPoint will co-market Yahoo! Find-A-Friend to mobile network providers. The service can easily be bundled with pre-paid network packages as an added value feature to maintain customer loyalty and attract new subscribers. Yahoo! Find-A-Friend can be used anywhere in the world where there is a GSM network in place. It can be used on either WAP-enabled mobile phones/devices or standard mobile phones that support SIM Toolkit.
Yahoo! Find-A-Friend works by first asking the user to add a list of friends to their phone. This can be done using either an Internet website or directly on the phone. A request is then sent to each addressee asking for permission to be added to the list. When a user wants to find out where a friend or colleague is, they simply select a name from their phone list. Yahoo! Find-a-Friend then locates the friend, calculates the distance and sends the user a text message. An example text message would be "John is close to Piccadilly Circus, about 3.2km northwest of you". An important function of Yahoo! Find-A-Friend is that the user can de-activate the location finder to some or all of their friends whenever they choose. This means that a user maintains full control of their privacy at all times.
Fabiola Arredondo, Managing Director of Yahoo! Europe commented:
"Yahoo! Find-A-Friend is a fun, fast and accurate new way of locating friends and colleagues through the mobile phone. It is an exciting addition to our growing portfolio of easy-to-use communications tools and another development in our Yahoo! Everywhere initiative."
Peter Henricsson, Chairman and CEO of CellPoint commented:
"We have witnessed a strong global demand for CellPoint's Finder! Technology. The co-marketing with Yahoo! should increase the deployment of our technology and services to cellular operators across Europe and beyond."
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