MSearchGroove

Not likely if you look around the competitive landscape.

Reams of reporting on Google’s acquisition of mobile social networking start-up, Zingku Inc., would like to have us believe that Google is pushing the boundaries with an all-in-one offer to bring order to its scattered mobile assets ranging from mobile search & advertising services to social media (Dodgeball & Orkut), to a dedicated device (gPhone). But look closer and you’ll see that other companies, most notably Nokia and nimble newcomer GeoSentric, have the jump on Google this time. Put another way, Google’s push is more of an effort to catch up.

First, a recap of Zingku’s objectives and competitive capabilities. The Alarm:Clock blog (via GigaOm) tells us the company is the brainchild of MIT-educated Sami Shalabi, who launched the company in May 2006. Prior to this, Shalabi was with IBM for half a decade. His co-CEOs are Mussie Shore, who was CTO at McKinsey, and Marty Fahey, who was CEO of publicly traded Webhire.

(BTW: Zingku also powers another site owned by Shalabi called Ripple9, a space where musicians can promote themselves, a concept that reminds me of Oxy System’s phling! service, which also gets plenty of mileage out of mixing social networking and creative content. In line with this focus, phling! is a mobile music community service that combines mobility, social networking, and music. As Mike Krasner, CEO of Oxy Systems, Inc., puts it: “It’s a music experience that provides fast and direct access to all the music, podcasts, and photos stored on the user’s personal computer. Integrated with the mobile social network experience, it helps subscribers discover others with similar interests as well as find new music and artists.” More from Mike in an upcoming podcast, along with a video demo produced by Oxy Systems exclusive to Msearchgroove.)

In a nutshell, Zingku combines social networking and text messaging – a bit like Twitter on steroids. Zingku’s service (provided free to users) harnesses standard SMS text and picture messaging features on mobile phones, and a browser on the Web, to let users create, share and connect with friends around content. To this end it enables users to share photos, send invitations or conduct polls (What should we do tonight? Go to a movie or a party?)

From the company site: “With Zingku, things you wish to promote or share can easily be created and fetched via mobile, instant messenger, and web browser…Our service integrates your mobile phone with a personalized web site so that you can easily move (zing) things back and forth between the web and your mobile as well as powerfully connect with friends and optionally their friends.”

But it’s not all warm-and-fuzzy Web 2.0. Zingku’s service is built around what it terms a “shameless commerce” aspect: “Merchants can send an access code to customers who can then download a mobile flyer and share it with friends.” (I’ve hinted at the power of mobile flyers before in my coverage of vflyer, for example. Google no doubt sees this scheme as more than low-bandwidth, low-maintenance viral marketing; promoting word-of-mouth can also give mobile advertising a much-needed personal touch.) Of course, it’s quite easy to imagine new revenues at the intersection of viral marketing and mobile search…

Connect the dots and Zingku’s game (or should I say Google?) is to be at the center of everything users do with the content they make and people they communicate with. It’s a great strategy, but it’s also the value proposition at the core of what the new and much improved Nokia, for example, is all about.

Take Nokia’s recent string of acquisitions and announcements. (Likewise, I urge you to check out what Michael Halbherr, Nokia’s director of Location-Based Experiences, told me in this Q&A.) Nokia, a company that believes that “location context is the most essential feature of mobile devices going forward,” has certainly put its money where its mouth is. It snapped up gate5, a maker of navigation software for mobile phones; launched Mosh, a new site that lets mobile users connect and share content directly from their mobile device; and acquired Twango, a start-up led by former Microsoft employees that lets users store and share photos, videos, and other media and access this collection of content from their PCs or mobile phones.

For an encore, Nokia has taken the wraps off Ovi, a portal that, – acting as a gateway to Nokia services - lets users access their existing social network, communities and content, beefed up its mobile advertising business and fine-tuned its mobile search application.

Meanwhile, GeoSentric has come out of stealth mode with $14.1 million in funding and a well thought out plan to combine Web 2.0 tools and technologies (the slew of stuff that enables users to create, share and experience their own content) with context (location as well as data on individual user profiles, click patterns, social network interactions – the works!). Predictably, GeoSentric has figured mobile search and mobile advertising into the mix, tapping into context to deliver results and brand messages the user will find relevant and useful.

It sounds like a tall order, but its management team (chock-full of Internet veterans who have built up technology companies including Netscape, AOL and Oracle) is not one to pipe dream. GyPSii, the company’s geo-integration platform for mobile phones, personal navigation devices, web browsers and Internet-connected devices, including PCs and set-top boxes, covers all the bases (on paper) to enable the convergence of location-based services, social networking and search.

The suite of GyPSii applications, which can be offered as part of a mobile services package or pre-loaded on a mobile device, uses geo-location software technology to connect people to people and people to places. (It’s easy to imagine a lot of cool use cases and I don’t want to get ahead of myself here. Instead, we’ll get the news and views from the source and circle back with an exclusive c-level interview soonest.)

And we also shouldn’t rule out Yahoo. Social media is a part of the company’s DNA and I have written several articles recently to drive this point home. (Check out my recent column for eContent magazine, and browse all of my articles under the “Portfolio” section in the new design.)

Michael Bayle, Yahoo’s GM, Global Monetization, has told me several times that Yahoo intends to tap its huge and loyal user community, Yahoo Answers, for mobile content ratings and recommendations moving forward. Recent data from Nielsen//NetRatings shows that Answers is by far Yahoo’s fastest growing channel. It has gone from an average monthly unique audience of 2.3 million to 15.7 million.

[Another mobile search provider has committed to taking the wraps off its mobile search/social search offer here first (!) All I can say is check back in mid-October for exclusive coverage and a super-cool video.]

My point: Google is on the right track, but it’s not a shoe-in for pole position. Other companies are also building the capabilities mix to deliver a one-stop offer of all things at the crossroads of communication, content, context and community. It’s a wide-open Web 2.0 offer we’re talking about here, and users will have little patience with companies that fail to put the individual at the center of all this, allowing them to capture, edit and share content as well as find people, friends and content on the fly. The acquisition of Zingku plugs a gaping hole in Google’s strategy, but the trophy will go the company (or companies) that walks the talk.

• Posted in
• Web 2.0, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising

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