Mobile communication services provider Pinger has launched Pinger Phone, a new mobile application that provides a simple interface for managing and communicating with contacts.

Consumers can see IM presence in their contacts or their social network feeds and then decide whether to call, text, instant message, email or send a Facebook, MySpace or Twitter message, all from a single menu. Pinger Phone is a free application and available now for iPhone and iPod touch devices.

"We founded Pinger with an interesting tenet -- we knew we needed to be device- and carrier-independent, but we wanted to do applications," said Joe Sipher, cofounder and chief product and marketing officer for Pinger, San Jose, CA.

"All Pinger Voice Messaging requires is being able to receive a phone call and send text message -- you can send a voice message to a mobile phone, and you can reply to it, forward it or send it to groups of your contacts," he said.

Pinger claims that 600,000-plus people use that service.

"It was taking a long time to get critical mass, so we decided to launch this app for the iPhone and distribute it through the App Store, which is a carrier-independent way to distribute rich mobile applications," Mr. Sipher. "There's been a massive growth in social networking, yet mobile social networking still in its infancy.

"Five times as many IM messages are sent compared to SMS, but IM and social networking are not as built into the mobile experience as calling and texting are," he said. "That's what we're doing with Pinger Phone -- integrating social networking and IM into the basic mobile experience."

The Pinger Phone iPhone app is ad-supported, with AdMob serving as the mobile ad network and sharing the ad revenue.

Advertisers on the platform have ranged from Comedy Central and various travel agencies to other iPhone apps and mobile games.

Advertising generally takes the form of banner ads that are integrated into the friend news.

There is one ad per screen in between two people feeds. Ads are targeted by gender, birth date and ZIP code.

Pinger plans to support BlackBerry, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian in the future.

Pinger believes that if people under 25 designed mobile phones, they'd put IM and social network messaging alongside dialing, texting and email.

With more than 30 billion messages sent on IM and social networks every day, Pinger launched this app with the goal integrating them into the basic mobile phone experience.

One key feature of Pinger Phone for iPhone is the Pinger Menu, which lets consumers call, text, IM, e-mail, or send a Facebook, MySpace or Twitter message to contacts.

The Pinger Menu makes communicating easier because consumers don't have to navigate back and forth between different applications when communicating with friends.

The Social Network Feed Consolidation feature pulls together Facebook, MySpace and Twitter feeds into a clutter-free format.

"IM is integrated so consumers know their contacts' presence, whether or not they're busy, to determine the best way to contact them," Mr. Sipher said. "The four pillars are call, text, IM and email, with the other being social networking.

"This turns a phone application into more a people-centric mobile communications point-of-view," he said.

People can then communicate with their contacts with just one click, and with one touch, consumers can view their entire communications history with that person.

Pinger Phone automatically switches to the horizontal keyboard for faster and more accurate instant messaging.

The app supports AIM, Yahoo IM, MSN IM and Google Talk.

U.S. consumers can appear online all the time because Pinger Phone can be set to alert consumers of new IM conversations with a text message.

Pinger Phone users can avoid paying for texts by sending IMs to any mobile number over their iPhone's data connection.

The Pinger Phone user does not pay to send or receive these messages, although standard carrier fees do apply.

A keyboard is always shown in Contacts so that users can start searching right away.

IM status is shown next to each contact who is an IM buddy. Every contact has buttons to call, text, IM or e-mail right under the name.

Pinger Phone is a free application and is available in the Apple iPhone App Store at http://itunes.com/app/PingerPhone.

Pinger plans to support additional mobile platforms including BlackBerry, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian.

"We're trying to integrate IM and social networks on as many smartphones as we possibly can," Mr. Sipher said. "Hopefully, BlackBerry will launch in the first half of 2009, with others soon to follow after that.

"In addition to the App Store, we used mobile advertising to acquire most of those 600,000-plus users," he said. "We learned a lot using mobile as an advertiser, using AdMob, DeckTrade, Quattro, and we plan on using them again to get the word out about our new iPhone application -- it's a central strategy for us and works really well.

"We've done Web ads, radio, contests, but the most effective thing for us has been mobile advertising."