We know there's no shortage of young, successful, smart people in this town, but we still turn a little green with envy when we hear about guys like Ben Keighran. The Australia native is only 25 years old. After successfully launching bluepulse in his native land in 2002, he took the show on the road and ended up here in the Bay Area. Like another young tech-maestro we recently spoke to, Keighran houses his company in Silicon Valley (in fact, in YouTube's former quarters), but lives here in the city by the bay.

Bluepulse, which recently acquired $6 million in funding, is all about mobility: it's a phone-based social network of more than 2 million people in 150 countries. It's accessed via software on your phone that allows, amongst other things, messaging, video/picture sharing, and Internet content. We weren't sure what separates it from the variety of social networking apps out there, but Keighran himself cleared it up in an e-mail interview -- and answered some other questions as well.

1) You work in Silicon Valley yet live in San Francisco. Why's the valley good for Bluepulse, but the city's good for Ben?
The Bluepulse team is mainly engineers right now but we also need to attract great business people. We felt that by setting the company up in San Mateo, we would be able to attract people living in the South Bay, which seems to be more the engineering folk, as well as people from San Francisco, which seems to be more often than not, business people. So far it’s been a great decision for us to set up shop in San Mateo.

I personally chose to live in San Francisco because I am very much a city guy. In Australia, I grew up in the city of Sydney and it is just the sort of lifestyle that I enjoy. Culturally San Francisco is really similar to Sydney and San Francisco has the added benefit that lots of people are in the technology industry and therefore there are lots of people I have things in common with. I love San Francisco and have started calling it home. But I haven’t lost my Australian accent…yet.

The deal with bluepulse vs. other social networking and who it's meant for after the jump

2) Can you elaborate on exactly what a "mobile social media company" is, and how it's different from some of the other services out there? For instance, I've heard of Twitter and Pownce and Jaiku -- not that I have any clue exactly what they are either. Are those your direct competitors or is Bluepulse something different altogether?

A mobile social media company is a company that provides a mobile-only Internet service rather than a window or portal into a desktop Internet service. This differentiation is important because a service like ours is specifically designed to be consumed on a mobile phone and is not a half-baked or trimmed down version of a desktop Internet service/website.

Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku are all interesting, and they are not our direct competitors, but each has a component to their service that attracts a mobile audience. People are using these services for different reasons than they are using bluepulse and none of these services would be considered replacements for bluepulse. For example, people use Twitter to broadcast information about themselves to anyone, whereas people use Bluepulse because it’s the best way of staying connected with friends on mobile. It all depends on what you are looking for in a social messaging system.

3) So, as was probably revealed in the last question, all this "Web 2.0/Social Networking" stuff is a little out of my wheelhouse. Am I reading it incorrectly that the primary target audience is young folks? What are the other applications of and aspirations for Bluepulse, once your foot's been firmly planted in that youth market? (In other words, why should a luddite like me utilize it now? Or what will I find interesting eventually?)

While bluepulse is targeted at the 18-30 year old demographic, it is definitely a product that is used by people of all ages. Everyone is living a more on-the-go lifestyle today, not just the 18-30 year old set, and everyone wants to stay in touch with friends, family and business associates without having to be tethered to a PC. Bluepulse is a great way to share life’s spontaneous moments. If you like to stay in touch with your friends and you have a mobile phone, then you would have a lot of fun using bluepulse because you can message for free while seeing any photos or videos your friends have uploaded to their profile on bluepulse. Additionally, a “luddite” like you might also really enjoy using the bluepulse widgets -- webcams, weather, stock quotes, email, RSS and lots more. Bluepulse works on almost all internet-enabled phones so chances are, it’ll work on yours, and your friends’ phones.

Unlike SMS or Voice calling, with bluepulse you have an on-going dialogue of pictures, video and text with your friends which is significantly more engaging than SMS and makes it easier to keep in direct contact with lots of friends rather than having to call them all the time. So, we hope you will find it interesting now AND as we continue to add features going forward.

Our goals are to:
-- Make bluepulse available to everyone with a mobile phone, free.
-- Maintain the vision of providing the best way to keep connected with friends on mobile.
-- Become the destination on mobile; the first thing you want to look at when you wake up in the morning, to see what is going on around you.

Sounds like a fun way, perhaps, to capture our toddler's spontaneous crazy antics and send them to his grandparents, who are always begging for more. In any case, we'd like to thank Keighran for his time -- if bluepulse sounds like it might be for you, check out www.bluepulse.com.