Zyb Picks up Imity

Danish startup Zyb has confirmed TechCrunch’s report from last week that it bought mobile social networking startup Imity in a combination of cash and stock.

Imity lets mobile users located each other via—get this—the Bluetooth stack built into their cell phones. Obviously that only works over very short distances, but the idea is that you walk into a room, your phone lights up all the appropriate people, and then your social networking profile connects to theirs.

The report quoted Imity’s co-founder Nikolaj Nyholm explaining the idea: “It is not about where, it is about here. What Imity has been focused on is figuring out what is happening around you here and now, not that a movie is playing five miles away from you. It is about sensing the information here and now, and making those connections that would not happen otherwise. For instance, people who were reading each other’s blogs but didn’t know each other in real life have ended up meeting each other because they are at the same restaurant.”

Zyb, meanwhile, began life as a mobile backup solution, but eventually launched a social networking portal because they were sitting on all that user contact data, the article said. Well, that and the fact that nearly everyone else on the planet is launching mobile social networks these days.

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