Frengo mobilizes for social neworking

I recently had a chance to meet up with Mahi de Silva. He is a veteran of the tech world, having worked as a senior vice president and general manager of Digital Content Services for VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN). No doubt, he learned quite a bit about mobile messaging and entertainment.

So why not apply this knowledge to the social networking world? Well, that's what he did. And the result is Frengo.

Basically, with Frengo, you can develop mobile social apps to run on key platforms, such as Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Orkut and Bebo. This is no easy task. What's more, it is absolutely critical in the hyper-competitive social networking space.

Hey, mobile phones have become a trusted source (and always seem to be turned on and never far away). In other words, they should be the perfect medium to allow for connections with friends.

To prove out its model, Frengo has developed some highly successful applications. An example is FLIRTABLE, a dating system that is ranked in the top 20 on Facebook. It has over four million members.

"Our approach is to make simple and focused applications," said Mahi. "And since our platform can operate across other social networking platforms, we can greatly expand the reach."

That's certainly a good thing. After all, there are more than 200 million members on the social networks that Frengo integrates into.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.