IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Kyte aims to meld networking, media sharing

Fingers all tired from typing Web addresses from Bebo to Zebo to hit all your social networking and media sharing sites?
Kyte, a free service that lets users create, share and view personalized content, has been in beta mode since last April.
Kyte, a free service that lets users create, share and view personalized content, has been in beta mode since last April.
/ Source: The Associated Press

Fingers all tired from typing Web addresses from Bebo to Zebo to hit all your social networking and media sharing sites?

Daniel Graf believes he has an all-in-one solution — one you can put in your pocket.

Graf runs Kyte, a free service that lets users create, share and view personalized, interactive "TV" channels through their computers and cell phones. A channel can contain videos, interactive polls, pictures and slideshows, all hosted on Kyte; some can be live, such as sequences of photos in almost-real-time from a cell phone.

Several venture capital firms are betting Kyte will take flight, including Atomico, which was founded by Niklas Zennstrom, one of the pioneers behind the Kazaa file-sharing site and the Skype Internet phone service.

The Kyte service has been in a "beta" test mode at Kyte.tv since late April.

Once you've produced a channel, you can see how many people are watching it and chat with viewers live on the site.

"You share a picture of a dog and within a second or a minute or two, five people are chatting with you, 'Oh where is that? Cute dog!'" Graf said. "It's this instant connection that makes it pretty powerful."

Users can embed their channels in various online locations, too, including News Corp.'s MySpace and personal Web sites.

Graf wouldn't disclose the number of users, but said the site now has 4,230 channels. He said users are split between Europe and the United States, where people haven't been accustomed yet to using their phones for more than talking and texting.

Yet Graf is optimistic that Americans will come to embrace mobile data services.

"We're part of the new wave of mobile services that will drive, of course, the adoptions of more data plans," he said.