One of those firms, New York-based Upoc, is best known as a leader in the U.S.'s fledgling wireless "groups" space. The company enables users to build their own clubs and exchange SMS messages, while also hosting branded discussions for advertisers like New Line Cinema and carrier partners like Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless. Using a phone menu, users can also record brief voice messages that group members can listen to online at the Upoc site.

Later this month, the company is expected to take its messaging features to the next level by launching support for MMS.

As a result of the offering, members of Upoc's "Crazy Stuff I Saw" or "NYC Celeb Sightings" groups should be able to send photos taken with camera-enabled phones to the rest of the group. (Not only can you finally prove that you really did encounter Sarah Jessica Parker walking down 5th Avenue, you can provide a quick visual assessment of her wardrobe.)

As with voice messages, Upoc group members who don't have MMS-enabled phones can go to the site to view the sent images.

"In a nutshell, it's current Upoc functionality but with pictures added," said Greg Clayman, the company's vice president of marketing.

The offering is coming to market in connection with Finnish mobile phone manufacturing giant Nokia, which is expected to launch its 3650 video-capture/playback camera phone into the U.S. market at the end of the month. A U.S. wireless carrier also in involved in the effort.

Not surprisingly, the thinking behind the combined launch of the 3650 and Upoc MMS is that providing users with a built-in base of MMS recipients could boost phone sales and MMS revenues for the carrier. (As with SMS, sending multimedia messages requires users to pay a small fee; however, MMS messages are typically priced about four times' the cost of SMS messages -- theoretically making the offering highly lucrative for carriers.)

Upoc, with about 500,000 users, isn't the only U.S.-based wireless community player experimenting with MMS. SMS.ac, which has offices in San Diego, Calif., has a more international focus, which has helped it to establish itself in the more wireless-savvy international market -- so that it now boasts a staggering 10 million registered users throughout scores of countries.

The core technology behind SMS.ac, dubbed MMSbox, supports both SMS messaging to fellow users and Upoc-like groups of users, as well as MMS messaging. Because SMS.ac messages must traverse the company's systems -- which in turn connects wireless carriers, even if the operators lack interoperability deals -- the technology also removes many of the cross-network compatibility hurdles that long hurt SMS adoption in the U.S., and is currently one of the obstacles facing MMS abroad.

Still, SMS.ac is seeing little actual MMS use across its systems. For one thing, only a few dozen of the hundreds of worldwide wireless carriers support true MMS, which also requires advanced handsets like the Nokia 3650 -- which are relatively expensive and new in most markets. The technology is only seriously established and receiving serious marketing attention in parts of Europe at the moment.

Speaking of events happening across the pond, outsourced wireless community software firm Axis Mobile is ramping up after its creation out of the merger of community player Valis and mobile messaging firm Celltrex.

The result of that union is a new Israel-based community messaging vendor that licenses its software to carriers, enabling them to run branded groups and messaging applications -- like location-based chat, dating services, and games. Through technology inherited from Celltrex, Axis Mobile also supports picture messaging to MMS-based and legacy devices.

The firm is working with 11 carriers in Europe and Israel, including units of Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and Orange plc, and is aiming to ink its first deals in China and the U.S. shortly.

Despite the growing buzz around MMS in Europe, Axis remains reluctant to place too much emphasis on mobile multimedia.

"I think it will take at least 18 months before real MMS activities will be considered a significant revenue source for operators," said Ofer Oved, Axis Mobile's vice president of marketing and business development. "It will take time, but eventually MMS as a content platform, especially for what we call 'commu-tainment,' will be a significant revenue source. But it will take at least 1.5 or 2 years. The progress is very slow."

Like Upoc, Axis's Oved said that compatibility with older phones via Web interfaces is a necessary step in encouraging MMS use.

"This is the reason that some of the operators I am talking to right now are interested in implementing two-stage agreements with us," he said. "The first stage is sending multimedia activities or messages to legacy phones -- they want the end users to start acting like MMS users, although they don't yet have the right devices."

Christopher Saunders is managing editor of InstantMessagingPlanet.com.