The new offering could be a hit among users of popular social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. According to Yankee Group senior analyst Jill Aldort, 33 percent of all Internet users regularly access social-networking sites and "an increasing number of consumers want anytime, anywhere access to their online communities and the content that lives there."

Those who wish to make their content viewable on tiny handset screens can link Bango's "get on my mobile anywhere" technology to specific content with a minimum of muss and fuss.

Ready for Small Screen

"I can link a Bango Button to a party photo on my Facebook site and let my friends easily get it on their mobile," explained Bango CEO Ray Anderson. "It's difficult for them to find the same photo on the Facebook mobile site because they have to go to the home page of the Facebook mobile site and navigate around to find the photo they want."

The new "Bango Button," which can be test-driven at the company's Web site, consists of a special browser code that must be inserted into the featured Web page or e-mail. Anyone who presses the Bango Button will receive a short URL on the handset's browser that will provide immediate access to the requested content.

What's unique about Bango's software is that it automatically resizes the requested digital content to a format suitable for display on small handset screens.

Paid Content Option

"Like most bands, we have a MySpace site where people can listen to our music and see when we have gigs coming up," said Moonlife band member Claudio Tinnirello. Bango Buttons on Moonlife's MySpace site "make it easy for our fans to get wallpapers and ringtones onto their mobile. They'll even be able to get a map of where we'll be playing, making it easy to find the venue."

Although Bango Buttons are intended to be used to enable the free distribution of content among friends and family members, the company has developed related technology that commercial providers can use to deliver digital content in exchange for a fee. In this case, each mobile customer is located geographically and then automatically presented with a payment screen in the appropriate language and currency.

For example, MTV used Bango technology to help it extend the reach of last year's European Music Awards to include mobile-phone users as show participants for the very first time. During the broadcast, handset users were given the opportunity to download both free and paid multimedia content directly from the show.