Mobile Groove

Today we are kicking off with a new look and a new series of alternative search engine iPhone and iPad app reviews and road tests with Biznar, a mobile search app available for both the iPhone and the iPad that takes a unique approach to searching for business related information.

Why “alternative?” Because that’s where the excitement and the innovation is! Sure, our smartphone devices present us with three whole choices — Safari / Google, with Bing and Yahoo! (GBY) available …

Mobile changes all of the rules, especially in marketing and advertising where the advance of mobile devices has moved brands to pursue conversions and conversations. While the end-game is about influencing us to take an action via our mobile devices that the marketing intended (typically making a purchase, or reacting positively to the campaign call-to-action to download an app, for example), the challenge is even greater when the target audience is the generation of Digital Natives.

These hyper-connected and super-social individuals expect (even demand) marketers to conduct conversations with them and — more importantly — listen to their responses. And advertising they are delivered must match the context of what matters most to these Millennials: their lives, their experiences, their networks and their worlds.

The avalanche of mobile apps turns up the pressure on individual mobile developers to find new ways to rise above the noise and generate meaningful revenues. A great app is a good start, but developers determined to build a serious business also need a solid monetization strategy. Hillel Fuld shares three tips aimed at generating more clicks and — ultimately— more revenues.

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Most mobile app developers have realized that earning a living from their activities is no walk in the park. Not every app achieves the success of Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, or Fruit Ninja. Putting aside the issue of getting a mobile app discovered and downloaded, developers, especially on Android, are finding it increasingly difficult to generate any significant revenue from their apps.

Evolution, not revolution. That is what I witnessed first-hand as I walked around South By Southwest (SXSW) , the festival and conference hailed as a breeding ground for new ideas and creative technologies.

In 2010, the Next Big Thing was location-based social networking, a mobile-megatrend CNN reminds us was led by the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla. Last year it was all about group messaging services such as GroupMe or Beluga. And this year the excitement is all about “ambient location” and “social discovery” — a new category of interaction that brings together all the GPS-enabled mobile apps that run in the background on our devices and alert us when like-minded people are nearby.

Facebook and Twitter advanced their mobile strategies this week, each with an emphasis on providing brands a means to reach and engage with people who use the social networks to connect and communicate.

Twitter’s “news’â€� comes nearly two years after the company introduced the concept of Promoted Tweets. The approach effectively introduces advertising into tweet feeds, an experience that we mostly know from online.

To understand the importance of this week’s announcement, Twitter reminds us that Promoted Products have already been a part of our mobile experience. In fact, Promoted Trends and Promoted Tweets in search have been available on Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for Android and the mobile web (m.twitter.com) for some time. Additionally, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets in the timeline have been available on the mobile Web for several months.

In this column and across my other posts, I have often called out Facebook, Google and other companies for privacy invasions that torpedo any trust that we as consumers can possibly have in the resolve of these Web giants to respect the integrity of our personal data.

I’ve watched company after company cross the line and have patiently waited for a tipping point where the harm done creates a wave of public protest that forces meaningful change.