Icebreaker recently announced a deal with AT&T to put its mobile social network service Crush or Flush on the carrier’s portal, the biggest deal it has pulled off to date. It already has deals with Alltel (NYSE: AT), Cricket, Virgin and Boost. I spoke with Josh Levine, VP of marketing, about the deal, the importance of carrier deals to a social network and the thinking behind the sites features. More in extended entry…

Crush of Flush is a mobile social network similar to Hot or Not, where people can see a picture of someone along with tags and some brief personal facts and decide whether to tag them “crush” or “flush"… if two people “crush” each other they will be able to communicate, otherwise they won’t. One carefully thought-through thing is the crush system—focus groups showed that people did not want to be notified when someone had a crush on them; Levine said that attractive women can get upwards of 100 unsolicited e-mails on web-based social networks and it causes them to leave or use the site a lot less—and since “crush” means “I won’t ignore” you lots of messages would be sent. However, people wanted to be able to find out who had crushed them, so a page was added with that information. Levine said that 41 percent of people who used the service are female.

Off-Deck Vs On-Deck: When Icebreaker approached the carriers with their service, they were told: “We’re not going to make you as a company or as a product, you have to go out and build it yourself and come back when you have something to offer” said Levine. So the company built the business off-portal, but Levine said that although they don’t need to be on carrier portals it does give the membership numbers a nice boost—the service has gathered 300,000 users since it launched 8 months ago. Icebreaker has co-marketing agreements with the carriers for what is effectively a promotional link on the carriers’ portal. In my opinion this is the best way for carriers to handle content—have an open service and use the portals to direct their customers to appropriate content and services...they don’t need to restrict general access to keep people on their portal.

Business Model: Icebreaker currently gets revenue from subscriptions—although the AT&T (NYSE: T) service is free the Boost service costs 69c per day which covers browsing and chatting. “Boost is a prepaid service, people are used to being charged on a daily basis—daily charging is something they want and expect,” said Levine. However, the service is mostly free (data charges aside), and Icebreaker is looking at transactional and advertising revenue to supplement its income. Levine said the technology was ready, “It’s a question of figuring out the right time to turn that on by carrier, where it makes sense.”

Icebreaker is looking at a hybrid model for advertising, with the standard text and banner ads but also a deeper level of engagement with targeting based on the information people give: “If I could show you women 18-35 years old, in Malibu, interested in Jeep Jerokees...” He said a problem with banner ads is that when people click on them they leave the site, which they don’t want to do—and I’m sure Icebreaker doesn’t want that either.

International Expansion: Crush of Flush is currently only available in the US, and Icebreaker is keen to expand internationally. It’s launching lagou.com in China, which means something like “pinky promise”, because the concept of the “flush” didn’t go down well in China for cultural reasons. That is currently in beta and Icebreaker is in discussions with Chinese carriers. It’s also planning to announce something in Europe in the next month or so.

• AT&T Puts Crush Or Flush On Portal
• Australians Locked Out Of MySpace Mobile Web
• IceBreaker Gets $7.2 Million First Round Funding