Followap was the leading provider and pioneer of mobile Messenger - Instant Messaging and Presence solutions to the mobile industry. It was founded in 1999 and managed by Dan Volach and Ben Volach when mobile Internet was just born. By the time it was acquired, it had over 20 mobile operators many of them tier-ones, serving a combined user base of over 200 million subscribers. The company's headquarters were in London, UK. Followap's products enabled operators to establish advanced, interoperable mobile Messenger and presence-enhanced services, key for next-generation networks. Followap held numerous patents and was actively contributing to industry standardization efforts in forums including OMA,

XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (abbreviation XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an Open standard, open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Ext ...

IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...

3GPP The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is an umbrella term for a number of standards organizations which develop protocols for mobile telecommunications. Its best known work is the development and maintenance of: * GSM and related 2G and ...

and the

GSM Association The GSM Association (GSMA) is a non-profit trade association that represents the interests of mobile network operators worldwide. More than 750 mobile operators are full GSMA members and a further 400 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem ar ...

. Followap cooperated with device manufacturers including

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

and LG. Followap has launched the first commercial mobile Messenger service in the year 2000 in partnership with Eircell, Ireland's largest mobile network. Other key customers of Followap included the

Vodafone Vodafone Group Public Limited Company () is a British Multinational company, multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economic ...

Group,

Hutchison 3G Hutchison 3G Enterprises S.A.R.L., commonly known as Hutchison 3G (acronym H3G) and trading as 3 (Three), is the owner of a brand name that operates several mobile phone networks and broadband Internet providers in Hong Kong, Macau, Austria ...

Group,

BT Group BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

Turkcell Turkcell İletişim Hizmetleri A.Ş. (''lit. Turkcell Communication Services'') (, ) is the leading mobile phone operator of Turkey, based in Istanbul. The company has 39.3 million subscribers as of September 2021. In 2015, the company's number ...

Telecom Italia TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.) is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples (with the Telecom Italia Tower), which provides fixed, public and mobile telephony, and DSL data services. It is ...

, Wind and Vimpelcom. The mobile Messenger which Followap pioneered evolved into extremely popular services following the introduction of the iPhone and App stores for wide-market distribution. These include WhatsApp, Line, QQ, WeChat and KakaoTalk. The company was acquired by

NeuStar Neustar, Inc. is an American technology company that provides real-time information and analytics for risk, digital performance, defense, telecommunications, entertainment, and marketing industries, and also provides clearinghouse and directory se ...

for approx. $140M in cash, in November 2006. Investors included

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

and Carmel Ventures.

References

{{reflist Defunct telecommunications companies of the United Kingdom 2006 mergers and acquisitions