Nexit portfolio company Limbo and mobile social networking leader Brightkite merged in April 2009 to form the largest location-based social discovery service in the world.
The combined entity has more than two million unique monthly users, award-winning products, strong advertising revenues and a highly experienced executive team. The company, which will use the Brightkite brand, will focus on its combined service that helps friends increase face time and share real world experiences.
Nexit Ventures was the lead investor for Limbo’s $9 million investment round in January 2009. Other investors include Azure Capital Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and New Enterprises Associates.
By bringing together the millions of Limbo users and the product excellence of Brightkite, the combined management team believes it provides users the world’s best social discovery experience. “The Brightkite team has proven themselves to be masters of building a passionate and loyal community around their sleek mobile products. We are convinced that together we can build the new features our members want, more quickly, on more platforms and in more markets,” says Jonathon Linner, CEO of Brightkite and former CEO of Limbo.
“The two teams share a common goal of using location-aware mobile services to enhance all of our social lives and Limbo has demonstrated unparalleled success in attracting consumers and advertisers to its services. Together we can execute faster against our combined vision and build a fantastic service for our community of millions of consumers,” adds Martin May, co-founder of Brightkite, who will now serve as EVP Products of Brightkite.
“We are excited by the user traction Limbo had made when we invested earlier this year, and we are even more excited now that they are strengthening their team and products by combining with Brightkite,” added Michel Wendell, general partner of Nexit Ventures.
The new Brightkite has two million unique monthly users and process more than 50 million SMS messages monthly. It has partner and distribution relationships with Facebook, Apple and more than 25 mobile operators in North America and hundreds across the globe. As a part of their commitment to user satisfaction, seamless product integration was achieved within weeks of the merger.
The Brightkite product has been widely regarded as having the best user experience of all mobile social products. Macworld claimed: “The attention to detail and the amount of effort put into developing this app becomes quite clear when you delve into Brightkite’s advanced features.” BusinessWeek recently listed it as one of its favorites, highlighting its sleek design and UI: “Brightkite, a location-based social network, does this beautifully.” Ars Technica claimed: “the true king has just been submitted to the iTunes App Store: Brightkite.”
Brightkite launched its Android application in June 2009 to broad acclaim. TechCrunch said: “The application’s interface is dead simple, whilst still providing just about every bit of Brightkite-based functionality you’d expect of it. The interface is well polished, and the functionality is exhaustive.” The new Brightkite is headquartered in Burlingame, CA and has offices in Denver, CO and Helsinki, Finland.
