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A Network Called Pring
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Pring is a homegrown social network which is zinging with life and
brimming with millions of messages going back and forth over cell
phones, handhelds and Internet as well. But you don’t need to have a
PC and Internet connection to be an active part of the network. That’s
the beauty as also the strength of Pring. Its sphere is not limited by the
small number of computers that are there. Pring can have as many
participants as the number of cell phones. PCs and Internet are
additional supplements rather than limiting essentials
Pring is a fantastic service. It is a platform designed as a social network
and fueled by user generated content. Since its inception, it has
witnessed tremendous growth and is perhaps the largest social network
in Pakistan right now.
While it is very encouraging to see a completely home grown service
developed with very advanced technologies, it is even more gratifying
that it was funded locally as well. Pring is owned by e-Business (Pvt.)
Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Panasian Group.
Considering the trends in Pakistan where Internet penetration is pretty
low compared to the telecom penetration, Pring offers its service
primarily over cell phones. Medium of service is entirely SMS whereas it
has significantly large Web audience as well. Just to get a taste of
things, Pring is now processing more than 0.2 Billion SMS per month
and registers thousands of subscribers every day. Development and
maintenance of the system which is responsible for such amounts of
data and traffic is an enormous achievement of e-Business.
According to Chief Executive Officer of e-Business, Dr. Muqtaza Shah,
“Pring reaches out to the actual Pakistan, where orthodox social media
has no chance of reaching in a couple of years at least. Not just that,
Pring has given voice to every Pakistani by enabling them to share
what they want with potentially millions of people out there at virtually
no cost to them.”
Despite the enormous popularity of social networks, how many
Pakistanis are on them? Not a lot. For one; you need a computer, a
working Internet connection and the ability to read and write English.
Not a lot of Pakistanis can fulfill that tall order and have the ‘luxury’ of
being on a social network. Luckily for us, the folks at e-Business
understood this limitation and have been working on the next big thing
from Pakistan: a social network over SMS called Pring.
But it’s not as simple as that; the team behind Pring is very ambitious.
“We want to bring the power of the Internet to your basic cell phone”
says Dr. Muqtaza Shah. “You see, there has been this explosion of
mobile growth but next to very little growth in services for these cell
phones. Data usage is still very low. The logical platform for Pakistan is
SMS.”
Backed by industry heavy weights such as the Panasian Group; e-
Business has developed interesting technologies that connect
Facebook statuses, Twitter updates and Web feeds into your Pring
account. Pring aggregates these updates and sends them to you over
SMS. The idea is that you can get SMS updates from anyone on Pring:
either a twitter account, a local Pring user or an RSS Web feed. This
allows people who have never seen the Internet or know what a social
network is, to be part of a social network.
The results? e-Business says that despite them being in Open Beta
and no marketing, they’re seeing tremendous traction of thousands of
users every day.
“We want Pring to be a mobile social platform for all things SMS” says
Dr. Muqtaza. “Pring reaches out to the average Pakistani, where
orthodox social media have done a bad job and ignored them. We’re
enabling every Pakistani to be able to share their voice and be part of
the global community despite their low-income bracket”.
Pring currently works on Ufone, Zong and Warid. You can join in by
sending an SMS to 2323 on Zong, 9536 on Warid and 414 on Ufone.
You can also join online via http://www.pringit.com
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For Whom Pring Rings?
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