MANILA, Philippines?The event took on the guise of an ordinary dotcom launch where the food was good and the drinks were intoxicating.

Shortly after the bar had opened and the potent potables were served?the most lethal of which happened to be a vodka concoction of the most fiendish tang that left all other senses numb?officials of ThumbMOB Philippines Inc., a developer and publisher of Southeast Asian-themed social apps and games, announced the launch of mig33 in the Philippines.

With over 47 million users worldwide, more than a billion chat messages exchanged daily, and over 4 million virtual gifts purchased every month, mig33 offers a social entertainment platform for the so-called ?feature phones? that dominate the mobile subscriber base of emerging economies.

Modeled after successful East Asian social networking services, such as Japan?s GREE and China?s Tencent QQ (now valued at $2.5 billion and $43 billion, respectively), mig33 differentiates itself by bringing mobile social networking and entertainment services to billions of consumers in rapidly growing mobile markets such as Indonesia, India, South Africa, the Middle East and the Philippines.

?We are very excited to launch in the Philippines,? said mig33 CEO Steven Goh. ?Mig33 has become the world?s biggest mobile-first community by relentlessly focusing on entertainment and access?bringing the best stuff to the most number of people.?

The social network site?s services are available worldwide and optimized for more than 2,000 handsets.

ThumbMOB has localized the mig33 mobile app, which can be downloaded from http://www.thumbmob-inc.com/. You may also point your phone browser to http://m.thumbmob-inc.com.--Eric Olona