Rather than piece together what Motricity’s $135 million acquisition of InfoSpace mobile business unit means, MSG went to the source in an exclusive interview with Brendan Benzing, InfoSpace VP of Mobile Search. (Actually, I had the interview in the bag earlier, but just settled in my hotel in Minneapolis to write it up.)

Q: Mobile content and mobile search are an obvious fit in terms of business models. How will InfoSpace and Motricity work together?

A: One, we certainly think that our expertise in search, coupled with a lot of the things that Morticity has done around storefronts will be very powerful. As you know, the off-deck market is going to become more important over time and their experience’s there, we believe, will also give us another channel for distributing search as well.

So that is an area where there is really no overlap. Motricity currently does not provide search services to carriers directly. They have some relationships and we’ll look to compliment those as much as we can going forward. We think there’s a lot of opportunities with their customer base to take mobile search out to a whole new group of customers. After all, Motricity has relationships with the likes of NBC, BET, Black Entertainment Television, Turner, Bravo, CNN and Warner Music Group.

Q: So it’s mobile search as an interface to all of that mobile content that is going to be accessed on the storefronts and elsewhere where Motricity now plays a role. Is that what you’re saying?

A: Yes, exactly. Motricity has a lot of information about what types of content are is being bought and purchased through their storefronts. We’re going to want to take advantage of that and have that certainly influence the way that we handle relevancy around certain types of queries that are going to be specific to mobile phones and how that content is going to be handled. We think that’s an important thing for on-deck as well as off-deck.

And in addition, when you look at our portal experience, search is a natural extension of portals. No company has launched a portal without search in the online space and I anticipate, moving forward, that mobile portals will also offer mobile search to help users find what they want. That combined with Motricity’s expertise in storefronts really helps close the loop on the primary components of the mobile experience today. People go into the portals; they visit and browse storefronts and we think mobile search will unify those experiences.

There’s certain areas where there is perhaps some slight overlap in terms of storefront capabilities and portal capabilities but our goal is to continue to bring “best of breed” and make sure that we can manage the needs of all of the different types of customers.

Q: Can you tell me about the go-to-market plans. Will Motricity present InfoSpace mobile search to its customers as a clear option?

A: The deal was just announced. But for all intent and purposes, this is going to be one entity. I don’t anticipate that you’ll see us marketing products under different brands and separations the way, historically we have. This would be a single company that’ll have a plethora of services that we think should be unified over time. I think what is important, is to understand what different markets need. On-deck player’s verses off-deck needs are quite different. And so we’ll evaluate each of our capabilities and make sure that we’re bringing the best possible solution to market.

Q: Let’s focus on portals, media companies and all the other companies in the ecosystem that are going to give mobile search a top-notch spot in their offers moving forward. How do you expect this to play out and what does this say about the position of mobile operators?

A: At one level, it’s about enabling these mobile companies to offer mobile search. At another level, it’s about making sure the content is searchable. Companies will need both and we can deliver both by working directly with Motricity’s current and/or future customers.

Carriers are important. The majority of our revenue comes from carriers today and I can certainly say that carriers will be still, front and center in terms of our areas of expertise and in importance to us as a company. But taking that experience and that expertise and then going out and talking to the larger and wider market [of off-deck providers] is going to be part of the value that we provide in the whole ecosystem.

These combined entities [Motricity & InfoSpace] have significant coverage: we have eleven of the top thirteen North American carriers, four of the top six carrier portals, four of the top six storefronts, three of the top four music labels and four of the five top TV networks that we can count on as customers or that we’re providing services to [combined].

Q: Finally, what is the impact on mobile metasearch? On the face of it, the demand for choice and advance of verticals bode quite well for metasearch moving forward.

A: The legacy of Infospace as a company has certainly been around metasearch and we are certainly big believers in it as a philosophy as well. And what we believe in is inclusivity and not exclusivity. We believe that carriers are going to need to have choice and that we can enable that choice. And we will encourage them to extend that to their users.

Carriers really need to figure out a way to work with big brands because brands are important. Brands can bring audience and whether it’s Google, Yahoo, Microsoft or whether it’s TV networks or other well known brands around commerce. We think that all of those things should be able to be brought in. And what we offer really, in our search capabilities and our technology, is a platform for carriers to be able to manage this.

For the other side of the story, I highly recommend this interview with Motricity CEO Ryan Wuerch (via FierceMobileContent).

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Mobile Content, Mobile Search, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.