We’ve put a lot of hard work and exercised great focus in order to build Snaptu. To do something really well one has to focus, and now that we’re part of Facebook we are doing just that – we are focusing on Facebook for Every Phone.

Facebook for Every Phone is still in its early stages and there’s much more to do. Our goal is to build an amazing app, one that doesn’t require a fancy phone, but will still provide millions of people around the world with great new ways to connect and interact with their friends.

We hope that you enjoyed Snaptu and we thank you again for your support.

The Snaptu Team

On Nov. 11, we will be discontinuing support for other apps that ran on Snaptu, including Twitter, Cricinfo and LinkedIn, and they will no longer be available.

We’d like to thank you for being loyal users of Snaptu, and we’ll continue to make the Facebook experience on mobile even better. To upgrade to the latest version of the Facebook app, click here.

The Snaptu team.

We are no longer distributing the old Snaptu app and are now focusing on this new Facebook experience.

You can find the new app here

Our goal when we founded Snaptu in 2007 was to provide useful and innovative services to the 95 percent of mobile users that don’t have access to advanced smart phones.

Earlier this year, we announced the launch of a new Facebook mobile application to give people a great mobile experience on a broad range of feature phones. The Facebook for Feature Phones app currently works on more than 2,500 devices.

We soon decided that working as part of the Facebook team offered the best opportunity to keep accelerating the pace of our product development. And joining Facebook means we can make an even bigger impact on the world.

The acquisition is expected to close within a few weeks.  We’ll have more updates on Snaptu soon, and we’ll be working hard to offer a richer and more advanced Facebook app on virtually every mobile phone. During this transition period, we expect Snaptu will continue to operate as it does today.

We’d like to thank everyone involved in the development of Snaptu, especially our millions of loyal users. We can’t wait to get started at Facebook.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(March 15, 2011) – Snaptu, the breakthrough mobile app platform, and LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 90 million members worldwide, today launched the new LinkedIn mobile application for mass market phones.

Built on the Snaptu mobile app platform, the LinkedIn app brings smartphone-like user experience to over 2,500 different mobile devices, representing around 80% of the devices sold worldwide.

LinkedIn will now be available worldwide as a part of the Snaptu mobile app, which is already used by over 30 million people worldwide. It will join a range of other popular web and online services, including Facebook, Twitter and over 30 other news, sport, weather and entertainment services.

“With the rapid growth of mobile professionals around the world, we’re thrilled to partner with Snaptu to expand our global reach and be accessible wherever our members work,” said Adam Nash, VP of Product Management at LinkedIn. “By harnessing Linkedin’s rich developer platform, Snaptu’s LinkedIn application now offers millions of people direct access to professional insights and information on their feature phones, whether they are in the office or on the go.”

Snaptu CEO Ran Makavy: “LinkedIn has become as much a part of the working life as the mobile phone, so it’s very exciting for us to bring the two together. LinkedIn recognizes the value in reaching beyond the smartphone market to bring quality services to every device, leveraging the Snaptu mobile apps platform.”

“The Snaptu platform provides the complete technical and distribution structure to help publishers and service owners massively expand their mobile user base and unravel the immense monetization potential in the global market. We are delighted LinkedIn has joined the likes of Facebook and ESPN to offer an outstanding user experience to all mobile users, regardless of their device,” he said.

Snaptu has partnerships with mobile operators and device manufacturers across the US, Europe and Asia, so millions of mobile users will have the Snaptu app pre-loaded on their device.

To add LinkedIn, simply go to “Add more” and select “LinkedIn” and it will appear on your homescreen.

To download the LinkedIn app on Snaptu, please visit m.snaptu.com from your mobile device.

About Snaptu
Snaptu changes the way the world uses the mobile web, bringing millions of people online via their mobile phone for the first time. It is focused on providing useful, intuitive mobile services to the 95% of mobile users who do not have advanced smart phones.

Best known for its breakthrough mobile app, also called Snaptu, the company has a unique mobile platform that delivers fast, fun and effective services that work on virtually every mobile phone.

Snaptu was established in 2007 and has millions of users all over the world. It is backed by Sequoia Capital and Carmel Ventures. For more information please visit www.snaptu.com.

(CNN) — People who write — and read — tech news often forget or dismiss the fact that the vast majority of mobile users in the United States (70 to 75%) and around the world (up to 95%) still don’t use smartphones, tablets or other advanced mobile devices.

Furthermore, many feature phone users are unlikely to get a smartphone anytime soon — usually to save money, but sometimes because they prefer simpler technology. This doesn’t keep feature phone users away from the mobile internet, however.

(Traditionally, smartphones have been defined as phones that run third-party software (i.e. apps) and operate on more advanced operating systems. Feature phones are simpler, although recent changes are making the two types of phones more similar.)

So last week’s announcement of the new Facebook app for feature phones was a much-needed high-profile reminder that feature phones matter — and that they probably will continue to play a powerful role in the mobile landscape for several years to come.

Read more

TechCrunch: Jason Kincaid

Facebook has proven to be immensely popular on smart phones: it’s the most downloaded application of all time on the iPhone and probably holds the record on Android as well. But the user experience for so-called feature phones, which still make up the vast majority of cell phone usage worldwide, hasn’t been as rich — users generally have relied on Facebook’s lightweight m.facebook.com site, which gets the job done, but doesn’t really have an ‘app’ feel. Today, that’s changing.

Facebook has just announced the launch of a new application for feature phones that was developed in conjunction with Snaptu. According to Facebook’s announcement, the app will work across 2,500 device models from the likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and LG. The application will include a home screen that looks similar to the one seen on the iPhone and Android, and Facebook notes that it also includes contact sync support and faster scrolling through status updates and photos.

Read more

Built on the Snaptu mobile app platform, the new Facebook mobile app brings popular features like Photos and familiar user experience to the world’s most popular feature phones.

Working with mobile operators around the world, including Vodafone Romania, Starhub Singapore and STC Saudi Arabia, Three Hong Kong, Dialog Sri Lanka, Life Ukraine, Play Poland, Tunisiana Tunisia and Viva Dominican Republic, soon to be joined by Reliance India, Telcel Mexico, TIM Brazil, Vivacom Bulgaria and Mobilicity Canada – hundreds of millions of people will be offered the ability to download and use the app free for 90 days.

Like Snaptu’s own breakthrough app, already used by over 27 million people worldwide, the new Facebook app will also include a range of other popular web and online services, including news, sport, weather and over 30 other applications and services, including the popular LinkedIn, ESPN and AccuWeather.

Henri Moissinac, Head of Mobile Business, Facebook: “We are always looking to enable people to easily access Facebook wherever they are, on whatever device they are on. This new Facebook mobile application developed in close cooperation with Snaptu helps give more people the ability to stay connected through Facebook via a high quality and high speed mobile application on feature phones in an affordable way.”

Snaptu CEO Ran Makavy: “In parts of the world where mobile phones are more popular than computers and mass market phones are dominant, Snaptu is changing people’s lives. We are delighted to bring these people the best possible social networking experience, as well as the range of invaluable services within the app, which many people will have access to via their phone for the first time.”

“The Snaptu platform provides the complete technical and distribution structure to help publishers and service owners massively expand their mobile user base and unravel the immense monetization potential in the global market. We are delighted Facebook has joined the likes of LinkedIn and ESPN to offer an outstanding user experience to all mobile users, regardless of their device,” he said.

To download the Facebook app, please visit m.fb.snaptu.com/f.

For a full list of operators supporting the launch of the new Facebook app with no data fees on download of usage for 90 days, please visit blog.facebook.com.

About Snaptu

Snaptu changes the way the world uses the mobile web, bringing millions of people online via their mobile phone for the first time. It is focused on providing useful, intuitive mobile services to the 95% of mobile users who do not have advanced smart phones.

Best known for its breakthrough mobile app, also called Snaptu, the company has a unique mobile platform that delivers fast, fun and effective services that work on virtually every mobile phone.

Snaptu was established in 2007 and has millions of users all over the world. It is backed by Sequoia Capital and Carmel Ventures. For more information please visit www.snaptu.com.

About Facebook

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.

Also see the post on the Facebook blog

One such company is Snaptu, which uses apps designed to take up as little memory as possible. That enables them to work on phones with low processing powers. Takeup has been highest in the world’s poorer countries.

Read more

While smartphones seem to be hogging all the air-time lately, it’s easy to forget that most of the world (over 80%) is still using basic or feature phones. While this may be a sobering statistic for app developers hoping to get rich quick by selling half a billion 99c iPhone apps to India, it need not affect the mobile world’s ‘appiness too much, because Israeli firm Snaptu is rather successfully bringing high end apps to low end phones in the cloud.

Read More

Muita gente que ainda não aderiu à onda dos smartphones pensa que é impossível acessar uma conta no Twitter ou no Facebook por meio de seu aparelho móvel. Porém, para a alegria dos donos de celulares “comuns”, existe um aplicativo capaz de fazer com que esse sonho se torne realidade.
Criado pela empresa de mesmo nome, o Snaptu tirou dos smartphones a exclusividade sobre certos aplicativos bastante populares, como os de redes sociais, do site de compartilhamento de fotos Picasa ou o jornal “The Guardian”. Por meio dele, quase todas as plataformas móveis atualmente no mercado se aproximam dos cobiçados celulares inteligentes.

Read more

Los teléfonos inteligentes son cada vez más populares, aunque no todo el mundo tiene acceso a ellos.

América Latina, por ejemplo, es considerado el segundo mercado de celulares más grande del mundo, pero menos del 10% de los dispositivos en la región son considerados de última generación.

Pero una empresa que ofrece la posibilidad de instalar aplicaciones como las de los móviles inteligentes está ganando adeptos no sólo en América Latina, sino también en otras áreas del globo donde la telefonía aún no depende de redes de alta velocidad.
Snaptu ofrece acceso a redes sociales en teléfonos antiguos.
Se trata de Snaptu que ofrece un conjunto gratuito de aplicaciones que funciona en cualquier teléfono, especialmente en teléfonos con poca memoria.

Read more

Snaptu, a Sequoia-backed company that offers a suite of smartphone-like applications that can be installed on more basic handsets, has hit another major milestone: it’s now up to 20 million registered accounts, 5.5 million of which are active. And it’s adding users very quickly — it was only last June that the company announced that it had 10 million registered users, 2.5 million of which were active. In other words, the company has doubled its user base in only five months.

The company isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, either. Snaptu reports that it’s now adding 2.5 million new users a month — more than one a second — and that it’s drawing 3.3billion monthly page views. Snaptu says that 43% of its users are in Asia (including India), with 26% in North America and the rest split between Europe and South and Central America.

Smartphones like the iPhone and Android devices may be all we hear about these days, but the vast majority of mobile phones are still running operating systems that are much less sophisticated (and data intensive). That’s where Snaptu comes into play: users download the company’s Java application, which they can then use to install ‘sub-applications’. Snaptu’s library of apps includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, some news sites (including TechCrunch), and a more generic RSS reader. Snaptu offers these apps for free; it generates revenue through advertising.

Many of these services, like Facebook and Twitter, offer their own mobile-friendly web apps, but Snaptu offers a more consistent interface (you can jump between apps using an iPhone-like UI) and says that it’s been highly optimized for better performance. Whatever they’re doing, it seems to be working.

Read More

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – 11/10/10) – Snaptu, the breakthrough free mobile app for any phone, today announced it has become one of the most popular mobile apps in Mexico, adding over half a million new users in October alone.

Read More