Regular readers will know that MSG has teamed up with AltSearchEngines (published by my friend, colleague and the “voice of alternative search” Charles Knight) to enhance its mobile search coverage and ultimately create a forum where the two communities can explore the greater issues around search, discovery and recommendation.

This week, Charles and I take a giant step in that direction when we meet up (in person - finally!) to host a dinner and discussion for search companies from across Europe. Our event in Berlin on October 22 - timed to Web 2.0 Expo, a companion event to the Web 2.0 Summit and the U.S. Web 2.0 Expos in San Francisco and New York, organized by O’Reilly Media and Techweb - can be seen as a forerunner to the thought leadership roundtables we will co-create moving forward.

We have purposely chosen not to publicize the dinner widely and to limit the audience to a select number of search company executives. It’s a decision we feel enables us to encourage community, discuss the issues impacting search, and debate the solutions.

Topics and speakers are listed here, and include ubiquitous search (Mozilla Labs Head of User Experience Aza Raskin - who incidentally gave his first talk on UI at the age of 10! - explains how search can be enhanced to provide truly rich interaction inside the browser); peer-to-peer search (FAROO CEO Gosia Garbe discusses the democratization of the Internet, the impact of our judgment on search results and indexes, and the future of search in the cloud and beyond); and mobile search (I will discuss the mobile search and advertising trends high on my radar). Since all search is moving mobile, I look forward to connecting with new companies and people I can profile and follow on MSG.

In that vein, allow me to recount some news and developments you may have missed.

I picked up on them between trips and think it’s important to repeat them here. On top of this, I have several exclusive interviews/briefings I’ll be sharing with you soon, so please check back regularly.

ABPHONE: Abphone, a vertical mobile search company MSG has tracked from the start, has launched abphonebox, a white-label mobile search engine solution for the mobile companies, specifically mobile portals, brands, social networks and communities. The aim, Abphone states, is to help companies maximize and monetize traffic. To this end, the solution includes “banner and text links tools, which provide the most relevant advertising optimization to date.” The company has tested the beta version of its content search with two social networks and has proven to increase their traffic by “30 percent in just two months.” Some other stats that underline the pivotal role of vertical content search: Abphone counts “over a hundred million page views every month” and offers vertical mobile search service (focused so far on images, videos and games) in the U.K., the U.S., France, India, South Africa and Romania. In fact, Abphone is among the top five most popular mobile sites in South Africa. Read between the lines and this offer potentially puts the power of search (and advertising) in the hands of brands/destinations, allowing them make money on their traffic - and perhaps even position themselves as mini-Googles able to offer search as a service to other smaller content providers who need to make their content searchable/findable.

BOORAH: BooRah, a restaurant-specific destination that supports search and recommendation, has taken another big step toward mobile since I last spoke with Nagaraju Bandaru, BooRah Co-founder & CTO. The news on the blog is the launch of its free, location-enabled Web Services API for Web sites and businesses looking to offer online restaurant reviews and ratings to their visitors. From the blog: “BooRah’s semantic technology is uniquely positioned to deliver necessary content for mobile applications. The release of this API is a first step in supporting development of location-enabled restaurant applications, and we are eager to drive the adoption by enhancing based on requirements from the community.” I’ll have more on that and a mobile app Nagaraju tells me is in the works soon.

NEARUSEARCH: On the heels of an excellent briefing with Heather Mlodinow, NearUSearch CEO, comes the news that the premium SMS search company is gearing up to launch Qpons (pronounced “coupons”), a tool to help small local businesses implement mobile marketing campaigns. How does it work? Consumers use their mobile phone to search for Qpons locally, then choose the ones that appeal most to them. Businesses sign up Qpons as a way to reach customers and accurately measure response rates and ROI. Rates will start at $60 a month for 500 messages. (You can try out the functional demo at Qpons.NearU.us During our briefing, Heather - who calls her company a hyper-local vertical mobile search play - outlined how her patented search service can also build up an understanding of individual users (matching user profiles and interest areas). At another level, NearUSearch can take the data feeds of - well - anyone and index the content to make it searchable/findable and deliverable via a relevant premium SMS search service. I’ll have the 5Ws and my take on the business model in a later post.

OXYNADE: Oxynade, a newcomer mobile search company that was awarded Bronze in the category “Best mobile location based service” at the Mobile Search Awards in London, has developed Happenr, a mobile iPhone application that tells users what’s going on here and now across major cities in Europe. The Happenr mobile application is currently in private beta and will be launched soon. An email this week from Hans Nissens, Oxynade Managing Director, informs me that the next weeks will see a new version of the service “launch with full integration of Google maps and location based services.” The other side of the offer is an eTicketing platform “which we will use for the long tail of leisure events and connect to the existing affiliate programs of the major existing ticketing providers. I’m pleased to report that Oxynade has also offered to create an exclusive search engine for MSG, allowing us to keep the soon-to-be-launched Events section of MSG up-to-date with news and details on what’s on where in the mobile industry - even if conference/event organizers fail to submit this to the site. This functionality will be expanded to the MSG mobile site - so watch this space…

As I have said before, these are exciting times and I am always open to good ideas. Charles and I plan to expand our coverage of mobile search, and I encourage you to reach out to me directly to set up a briefing.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Content Discovery, Enterprise Search, Local Search, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search. 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.