In-Brief: An overview of the mobile search conference, news of a new federated mobile search report (set to be published in February) & an invitation for companies in the mobile search, content discovery & recommendation space to contact me for a briefing. 

January most certainly got off to a bang. It has been a whirlwind and exciting time – but the outcome is well worth it. The Netsize Guide is a whopping 300+ pages and will no doubt serve as a reference work for the industry. It will be available for free download, and Netsize tells me some 50,000 executives and opinion-makers have done precisely that every year since 2002 – the year the book first made its debut. Of course, MSG will also provide links and more promotion closer to the publish date. The guide is formally released each year during Mobile World Congress (3GSM) at a huge party – I know I can’t wait and I hope to see many of you there.

In the meantime, I’m preparing for my trip to London tomorrow to speak at the 2^nd Annual Mobile Search Conference organized by Visiongain. I’ve been invited to introduce MSG, give an update on my own mobile search research, and outline the trends and companies high on my radar. (Naturally, I’ll post tomorrow’s conference highlights here and be back full-force with a wrap-up on Friday.)

Regular readers will recall that I began preliminary research late last year for a Visiongain mobile search report and I’m delighted to say this project is not only underway; it has expanded to a two-volume report on mobile search and recommendation. I cover all the usual suspects, giving special attention to vertical search companies as well as multimodal search providers. If you want to be considered for inclusion, please contact me or my PA Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com) for a briefing.

One topic I’ll cover in the report and during my Visiongain presentation is federated mobile search. Regular readers, who have followed my posts on MSG or my columns in industry publications, will know I have tracked federated mobile search from the start. In fact, I’m putting the finishing touches to a comprehensive 20+ page white paper on federated mobile search that I’ll launch on MSG this month – as well as an exclusive podcast series with the sponsor company, so please check back regularly.

In my view, the avalanche of WAP and Web content, the emergence of niche verticals such as mobile video and the increasing desire of users to search the plethora of indexes flourishing just under the radar – such as blogs, user-created music and videos, and all the cool stuff that makes up the legendary Long Tail - require a new and all-inclusive approach to mobile search. It’s early days, but the advance of vertical search providers bodes well for federated mobile search. I’m thinking here of France’s Abphone, a pioneer in image search that MSG recently showcased in this exclusive podcast, and the rise of Veveo, a company that offers vTap, a free application that lets users search and view videos on their mobile. It recently sealed a deal with Motorola, which now has the option to pre-install vTap on its devices. And the list goes on…

In the white paper I argue that the branded vs. white label search debate is passé. It’s not either/or; it’s all. Put another way, mobile operators could limit the appeal of their services and the relevance of their search results by choosing to partner with a single search engine. In reality, users will gravitate to the companies that have the answers – and that can be any number of destinations ranging from directory providers, to niche content providers, to news agencies. The takeaway: Mobile operators must become mobile impresarios (to borrow a favorite term from Andrew Bud, Executive Chairman of mBlox). They can best prepare for the mobile search turf war – and ensure their central spot in the value web – if they enable all companies to contribute value, boost the quality of their mobile search results and extend the reach of their mobile advertising efforts.

And while they’re at it, they should create an open environment and open up some APIs to ensure all content (from partners and competitor content providers, portals etc..) is searchable, findable and buyable.

          

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 7:35 pm and is filed under Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search, Recommendation, 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.