Israel-based Zlango was founded in 2003 and is intended to revolutionize the way people communicate via mobile and web messaging. Here`s some company rant:

“Zlango is a revolutionary, simple and practical language. It’s made up of over 200 icons divided into intuitive and memorable categories. Words, concepts or feelings can be expressed by the different icons. Users love Zlango. They find Zlango easy to learn and master, and find that learning the language is unbelievably fast and amusing. They also say that using Zlango always generates a good and playful mood.”

Check out the icons that translate into this message – it is kind of funny. The real virtue of Zlango lies in the creation of a universal iconography that can be understood by anyone despite language or cultural barriers. So far, Zlango for mobile messaging is available in Israel, Philipines and some countries in the Caribbean. It has been downloaded 100.000 times by mobile users and sure receives a lot of public attention. The real potential can be realized through the web, however: everyone in the world can access Zlango via its web-page, post messages that get published, share them with friends, or embed them to their blog or website – and that’s the big web2.0 word-of-mouth snowballing leverage.

Interesting enough Benchmark Capital is also an investor in Facebook. Just think about all the potential that’s in becoming popular among that crowd! The target group that I estimate to be between the age of 10 and 25 might be decreasing over the next few years (aging society!), but there are enough people older than that who like things targeted towards their inner child. It has the charm of the cryptography that I used with my buddies when I was a child, but still, Zlango is not for me, because: