MSearchGroove

In-Brief: Mobile search provider Taptu enables users to share mobile search results, laying the groundwork for a service that combines search and social networking. Taptu also releases an in-depth white paper (for download via MSG) to help us connect the dots.

You’re reading it here first (!) Taptu has taken the wraps off 1-Tap, a feature of its mobile search service that - true to its name - lets users share their mobile search results (including cool mobile content) in one click. To save users from typing in their friends’ details, 1-Tap can also tap into other services such as Web-based email and Twitter.

Steve Ives, Taptu CEO, who pre-briefed me on the service last week, points out that 1-Tap is part of a larger strategy to place human interaction and judgment at the center of the mobile search experience. Unlike many of his peers, Steve is convinced that users are not content to search for information in isolation. “When you’re on a mobile device, most [of what you do] has some kind of social context….You don’t finish the process as a user until you’ve interacted with somebody. So we think that finding the search results is not the end of the process; sharing the search result with somebody [marks] the end of the process, and that has to be designed into the system.”

Of course, allowing users to connect with their peers also lays the groundwork for social networks around mobile search results and a clever way to monetize the interaction with search advertising. (At a recent Wireless World Forum mobile search event, Taptu hinted that search advertising is likely to show up around the end of the year.)

But sharing is just the first step in Taptu’s ambitious strategy to give users more of a say in their mobile search results. Look for the company to innovate in the area of enabling “human-assisted results” (tools and technologies that allow people to edit their search results) and indexing social information (such as the social graph) moving forward. In fact, Steve has today published a white paper which spells this out. (You can download the PDF copy here: Please log in or register to read this article) It’s a must-read document - and that’s not because Taptu has given my own somewhat controversial views on the value of people-powered mobile search such prominent placement.

My take? The best summation is the quote Taptu chose to put on the front cover:

“Taptu not only recognizes the importance of injecting human preferences and human judgments into computer algorithms to pinpoint truly relevant information; it has taken the lead in allowing people to communicate those results easily to their peers.

“In the past, if users wanted to make themselves heard they created a Webpage. What we’re seeing now with Taptu is the potential for communities to form based on their search behavior and passion for results, that reflect what humans want and not what algorithms dictate.”

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

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