tag = "Bing"

Microsoft is often referred to in the tech industry as "the ultimate platform player," because its considerable fortune has been earned by dominating platforms, most notably the Windows platform that most of the world's PCs use. Lately it has been adding platforms, notably Xbox, which has morphed from a games platform to an interactive device capable of serving all varieties of content, including streaming videos and access to social networking sites and services, and it continues to develop its Windows Mobile platform, whose latest iteration is version 6.5.

Buongiorno is turning the boat around. The 12-year-old Italian digital content provider, which began as an email newsletter, is “making a huge play” in the mobile social network space, or as Buongiorno’s head of innovation Marcus Thornley told mocoNews.net, “making the move to mobile 2.0”.

The company has already laid some of the groundwork. In June 2007, it launched its mobile-only social network Bing, aimed at 16-to-18-year-olds, and now available in a mix of 11 European and developing countries. As of March, members were exchanging over 20 million messages a week, with Bing amassing over 1.2 million logons.