Mobile Groove

First-time stats from M:Metrics, a company that measures consumer consumption of mobile content and applications, report 12.3 million users in the U.S. and western Europe accessed a social networking site with a mobile device in the month of June. (More details in this release.) The data, from a survey of 103,457 respondents in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the U.S., is based on a three-month moving average for the period ending June 2007.

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by Brad Flora

Breakthrough ideas–not technologies–are at a premium in today’s venture capital environment according to this recent report in Knowledge@Wharton, the business school’s online business journal. As standardizing technology and outsourcing continue to bring down startup costs, VCs are less interested in technology differentiation and more interested in big ideas that can go viral and bring in a growing audience. A checklist offered by Andrew Chung…

Proxpro, a provider of proximity mobile search, made its mark in 2004 when it broke on the scene with the industry’s first mobile social networking product (using location information) to target prosumers. (In a nutshell, this matchmaking service lets professionals find and meet people nearby who matter. Its patented technology and algorithms discover people nearby who match pre-specified interests. The service then sends a text message to both and, if both agree, a face-to-face meet…

During my whirl-wind trip of companies and conferences in London this week I had the pleasure of meeting for dinner in Soho with Bob Last, who heads up business development at Taptu, a mobile search company that has been on my radar since its launch in 2005. Some helpful background: this company is by no means a me-too mobile search start-up. Steve Ives, Taptu founder and CEO, was the brains behind Trigenix, a first-mover content discovery company that was later snapped up by Qualcomm and rolled into Q…

The following is an in-depth examination of the mobile search and content delivery landscape based on the competitive intelligence white paper presented at the March 2007 mobile search conference.

1. Mobile content: More effort than its worth?
With an avalanche of pre-packaged and user-generated mobile content slated to come online this year, subscribers can’t say they dont have choice. But they can complain about the tedious navigation process they have to endure to find, access and b…