FreedomPop Raises $4.3 Million In Additional Funding, Lets Users Share Data

Wireless provider FreedomPop, which offers free data to smartphone users, has announced additional funding of $4.3 million in order to bolster up its network and provide customers with more features. Case in point: the company announced that users will now be able share data with one another, whether they're friends, family members, or just acquaintances.

FreedomPop's new data sharing program allows you to share or trade megabytes almost like a currency of sorts, and will allow you request megabytes through Facebook or Twitter from users who are willing to hand them over. Purchasing the $99 iPhone/iPod Touch sleeve will get you 500MB per month, but if you need more, your social friends may help you out this time around.

As for the additional funding, the company says that the extra cash will help them continue to come up with new plans and social features that users will enjoy. The company outed the ability to boost the amount of free data each user gets for referring a friend to FreedomPop, a system that will not only reward users, but will also gain customers for FreedomPop.

FreedomPop CEO Stephen Stokols says that the company plans to do "very little" hardware development, and instead will focus on getting more customers and adding new features to their service. Stokols says that "hundreds of thousands" of users have signed up for FreedomPop so far, and the program is still in beta mode, so once the service launches publicly nationwide, we should see a huge surge of users make their way to FreedomPop.