Mobile Groove

In-Brief: Consider this (the last in this week’s trilogy of iPhone posts) a place-setter for the news we’re likely to see later this month from Taptu, a provider of socially-assisted search I have had high on my radar since it broke on the scene just over three years ago. Look for a new service focused squarely on enabling mobile search across touch devices, and a short private beta before it launches in the Apple App Store next month.

Taptu’s approach, which takes universal search to the next level, crawling and indexing the social networking sites and destinations such as MySpace, YouTube, and Wikipedia, to expose an eclectic mix of results and content we might not have found otherwise, has been at the core of Taptu’s differentiation. But it’s the company’s latest release white paper (Touch Search: A New Vision For Mobile Search, which you can download by clicking the button in the sidebar) that signals an exciting shift in the mobile search paradigm.

The advance of touch devices changes how we browse the mobile Web and, naturally, it impacts what we expect from mobile search. What’s more, the touch Web represents the fast-growing subset of the Web, consisting of websites and Web pages that are optimized for access by touch devices like the iPhone.

However, as I point out in this earlier post, Taptu does more than acknowledge this trend; it has responded with a roadmap to encourage the innovation that content providers and brands agencies will require to deliver an optimized search and advertising experience for touch devices. I met up with Andreas Bernstrom, Taptu COO, a few weeks back to see Taptu’s prototype search service in action. Now I have the green light to post (I respect Andreas’ request not to give too much away here), so here’s a brief summary of my private demo and the details I can share.

An exclusive podcast with Bob Rosenschein PLUS a look at some recent mobile advertising stats from the U.S., Vietnam, and Japan.

The 450+ attendees at Think Mobile that descended on NYC in March can count themselves lucky. We were treated to an excellent line-up of 60+ top-notch speakers, chosen by my esteemed colleague Matthew Snyder, Founder & CEO of ADObjects, a strategic cross-media consultancy, for their insights, ideas, and willingness to share both. Feedback from my panel on Mobile Search & SEO has been overwhelmingly positive, in part because Matthew and I brainstormed and purposely brought together an eclectic mix of individuals passionate about their work and the mobile industry at large.

Today I kick off this “mini-series” with Bob Rosenschein, Answers Corporation CEO and mobile search “guru” (my description- he’s far too modest). The company’s social search service WikiAnswers.com has seen some stellar growth, according to comScore. In March, the measurement and market research firm reported that WikiAnswers.com U.S. unique visitors reached nearly 19 million in January 2009, compared to 729,000 in December 2006. I caught up with Bob to get the inside track on his company’s mobile ambitions, discuss the key criteria for an optimal mobile search experience, and the role of mobile advertising in the scheme of things.

Listen to the podcast. [16:18]

Mobile social networks (or at least the clever ones) are mapping out business models that allow them to transition from being meeting places for communities to being marketplaces for commerce.

It’s early days and there are no easy answers – all the more reason to attend Mobile Advertising & the Rise of Social Networking: What does it mean for Brands, Agencies and Service Providers?, a Knowledge & Networking Seminar organized by AIME, (The Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment), this Thursday in London. The seminar provides the perfect opportunity to explore key learnings with industry pioneers and network over drinks. (The event begins at 6:30 p.m. and wraps up around 11 p.m. More details on the program and venue here.)

One company I look forward to hearing is Flirtomatic, a pioneer mobile flirting service that has had great success monetizing mobile users through conversation with added fun and great content such as virtual flowers and kisses. The company recently extended its reach to enable members to give the objects of their affection real gifts including chocolate and sexy underwear. As Matt Dicks, Commercial Director for Flirtomatic, put it in an interview with AIME’s Andrew Darling: The approach to mobile advertising is about marketing entertainment and content services as part of its mobile social network. “It’s about integrating ads and brands into the fabric of a social networking service – enabling premium gifting between users and using advertising to support content.”

Checking in before I check out to meetings in The Netherlands after a week packed with pre-CTIA briefings and a few discussions under NDA. More about that next week, along with a string of posts including an in-depth look at RingRing Media, complete with a rundown of the stats its seeing (all the more interesting since RingRing is regarded as the largest spending media agency in the U.K.), and why its (not-yet-released) ad-optimization platform will likely have a huge impact on how we conduct mobile advertising campaigns and how much we get back. I’ll also have my take on some recent iPhone usage stats from AdMob and Bango, as well as and some other surprises.

I’m also pleased to report that the interest in my series of mobile advertising white papers is going strong. While I’ve just only wrapped up Vol 2, my earlier white paper (Mobile advertising for newbies) will soon be making the rounds as part of a package of audio-visual presentations on mobile advertising produced by Henry Stewart Talks, a company committed to providing access to world class seminars by leading thinkers and authorities from around the globe in one online resource. The company commissioned me to summarize the findings of my first white paper and so educate the market about the pivotal role of mobile analytics in all we do. The more digital we become, the more the data matters…

Location is another topic high on my agenda, so I am looking forward to a F2F meeting/podcast with Dan Harple, who is responsible for leadership, strategic and operational growth at GyPSii, a super-cool company leading the race to deliver us mobile experiences that combine information, entertainment, social networks, and location/navigation. A passion for multimedia, real-time interactive communications, collaboration and social media runs through Dan’s bio like a leit motiv.

Starting this week off with a bang. I arrived back in Germany from ThinkMobile in NYC just in time to put some of the insights I gained from the mobile social media panels during the event to good use in Vol 2 of my series of mobile advertising white papers. (Kudos to MobileMarketer’s Dan Butcher for doing an expert job of capturing the key points and messages in his coverage (which you can read here), and a big thank-you for sending me his notes from the session that brought together MocoSpace, Buzzd and Cellufun. I had to step out for some client meetings but later caught up with the CEOs, all three of which are excited about appearing on MSG in podcasts and guest columns.

I’ll follow up on those conversations next week. For now, all attention is focused on Mobile Advertising For The Masses, my new-release white paper timed to CTIA and an essential read for marketers who want to tap into mobile social networks (and the ad networks they provide) to drive positive results. This time I evaluate the analytics capabilities offered by three ad networks: BuzzCity (BuzzCity), itsmy.com (itsmy.biz), and Peperonity (AdMob). I also compare the depth and breadth of analysis they provide, and examine the need for an additional comprehensive mobile analytics package to connect the dots, fill in the gaps, and give me the big picture view of what my campaigns achieved and how I might use this insight to plan and target future campaigns.

It’s among my best work and worth the all-nighters during and since my stay in New York to put in the final finishing touches. I won’t go into the details here (for that you’ll have to download the free white paper), but I can say BuzzCity came out on top, allowing me to visibility into who my customers are (gender), where they are (location down to the U.S. state level), and handset make and model, for a start.

itsmy.com also allowed me to hone my campaign to target my key demographic, but outdated order and payment systems dampened my enthusiasm. Peperonity also had a few highpoints, but hasn’t quite reached its full potential.

BTW: I’m also pleased that I have been invited by Andrew Darling to speak on mobile advertising, social media and my key findings during Mobile Advertising & the Rise of Social Networking: What does it mean for Brands, Agencies and Service Providers?, a Knowledge & Networking Seminar organized by AIME (The Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment) that will take place in London on April 2.

Judging from the emails, Tweets, and requests for more coverage on how and why human judgment can and must play a role in our search results, I can say my last post on social search created quite a buzz in the blogosphere. I’m happy that an invigorating exchange has followed this post, and even more pleased that it has us all thinking about what I view as the perfect fit between our mobile devices (personal) and our increasing demand for genuinely useful (personalized) results on the move.

I have had this trend high on my radar for several years, a passion that received its first outlet and accolades when EContent magazine gave me free reign to write an in-depth cover story on the state of Social Search (which appeared in the November 2007 issue). I loved researching and writing the article, a work I still regard as one of the best in my career. The good news: I’m told the article had – and continues to have – an impact on the content industry. The not-so-good news: When I wrote the article, I was disappointed that so few companies “got” mobile, and today – nearly two years later – only a handful of companies have really caught on.

To be fair, I wrote the article, aptly titled Teams Work: Social Search Gets Results, before companies such as abphone, ChaCha, hiogi and Taptu broke on to the scene with strategies that draw on social search approaches and algorithms to improve mobile search results ranking and relevancy. I invite you to read my comments in new-release white papers from abphone and Taptu, and MSG’s own soon-to-be released assessment of the user experience delivered by search engines (among them ChaCha).

But progress is progress, and I am confident that more online social search companies will sharpen their focus on mobile as the advance of mobile social networks and other communities pushes people-powered mobile search to the top of the agenda this year. (In fact, recent reports/stats on Twitter, Facebook, and my own discussions with social networking companies confirm an exciting new trend: We have begun to search in communities – and today the number of queries even exceeds our searches in Google. Connect the dots, and a game-changing search paradigm emerges. The power of people + the power of mobile = a power shift in favor of new mobile players who harness the wisdom of mobile crowds.

Where does all this leave mobile operators?