One of the biggest apps creating buzz around the Silicon Valley is the private mobile social network for couples, called Pair, which has secured funding from SV Angel and David Morin, founder of Path. But Pair could very well be a clone or copy of South Korean app, Between, which launched in February 2011 and before Pair.
At the GMIC GStartup Pitch Competition, Between won the 2nd prize at the Early Stage group of start-ups.
The five founders of Between started working together in June 2008 and met at Seoul National University, one of Korea’s top universities. The team worked on many different products, including eBooks, but finally pivoted to Between in June last year. Now armed with US$1 Million in seed funding from Southbank and a team of 15, Between is ready to go global.
So what is Between? Unlike Path, which is a social network for close friends, Between is a network for couples to express themselves and communicate with each other. Some of the features include private chatting, messaging with emoticons, sharing photos, a memo board for longer messages like love letters and an anniversary reminder.
Currently they have three different business models: One is a freemium app; another is to sell physical goods like photo albums using photos from the app as well as mobile coupons and lastly to earn advertising revenue.
Currently Between has 765,000 users worldwide with 75% coming from South Korea and 9% from China and 9% from Japan. Pair only has around 200K users.
It is currently available for download on iOS and Android.