Wrapping up an exciting mobile search white paper project this week with Peggy Albright, founder of Albright Research and MSG research associate. We can’t give away too much before the formal launch next week, but the research – which evaluates Google, Vlingo (Yahoo) and ChaCha – has also drawn our attention to social search, the Achilles heel of universal search engines Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. (In fact,  a comparison between mobile answers/search services ChaCha and Google SMS, ChaCha achieved 70 percent of Google’s SMS search volume in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to data from the Q4 Mobile Messaging Report from The Nielsen Company.)

While a new report from Bernstein Research may argue that (at least in the US) Google wins the mobile search battle hands-down on the strength of its brand, I believe that other factors (specifically, the quality of the user experience and the tie-up between mobile search and mobile social networking), will pave the way for other companies (and business models). BTW: I am scheduled for a podcast interview this week with Jeffrey Lindsay, Senior Analyst, Bernstein Research, to discuss the key findings of his milestone report, Google, IAC, Yahoo!: Mobile Internet – the Next Advertising marathon – Google and Yahoo! Moving to Front of Pack. In the meantime, I recommend you read Dianne See Morrison’s worthwhile summary post at MoCoNews.

In my view, social search – search that enables people to add their personal knowledge, opinions, and experiences to search results – has arrived in full force in online. (The market is already teeming with people-powered search engines – ranging from Wikipedia, which recently took the wraps off Wikia, a search service that combines computer-driven algorithms and human-assisted editing to Mahalo, a company building – and paying – contributor communities to direct searchers to relevant results, to nimble newcomers like NosyJoe, a private beta social search engine that relies on people to “sniff the Web for interesting content.”)

The mobile phone – a personal device we have with us at all times – represents the next frontier for social search.

We not only use our mobile phones to capture and share content; we also use them to interface with the world around us and connect with social networks on the fly. As cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito pointed out in her milestone book Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: The mobile phone has a pivotal place in our daily lives based on the fact that it is personal (we customize and personalize mobile devices and consider them an extension of our personal identity); portable (even the Japanese name for mobile – Keitai, roughly translated “something you carry with you” – stresses the relation between the user and the device, and not between the technology and function); and pedestrian (because it is portable it’s a perfect fit with life as it happens, and activities that require partial or sporadic attention).

It’s on our mobile devices that we have come to expect – even demand – personalized and context-aware services and applications tailored to our lifestyles and life stages based on the clues we leave behind, such as preferences, past purchases, browsing patterns, and a deep understanding of our interests and passions.  What’s more, the form factors of the device – a small screen and a tiny keypad – naturally limit our interest in browsing the Web as we do on a PC. Put another way, users can’t sift through lists of blue links results; they require answers that are genuinely useful and relevant.

Indeed, Internet search retrofitted for the mobile Web suffers some serious shortcomings.

• First, it is one-size-fits all. Whether you are a student, a scientist, or a silver surfer, Internet search engines (horizontal search engines designed from the ground up to deliver the same results to all searchers based on queries and keywords) deliver a similar set of results, regardless of our individual information needs.
• Second, it tends to promote search engine optimized sites over the truly optimal ones. To complicate matters, the mobile Web remains the rather poor cousin of the real Web. There is no cross-linking data to power PageRank algorithms, which is a major reason why regular road tests performed by companies such as Mobile Commerce Ltd. – a U.K. company that, among its many other capabilities – possesses what the founders call a “piece of enablement” that gives them deep insight into the search queries passed through the operator portals in the U.K., and the results set returned to the user – reveal that Google and Yahoo! fall down on the job.
• Third, it has huge difficulty when it comes to connecting with the indexes that are growing and flourishing under the radar, such as blogs, user-created music and videos, and all the cool stuff that makes up the legendary Long Tail. Mobile users expect these content types to figure in their mobile search results, a variety and freshness of content Internet search engines cannot deliver.

Enter “people-powered search,” social search that harnesses people to deliver results tailored to searchers on the basis of who they are and what they like, addresses these issues.

The introduction of an approach that effectively infuses human preferences and human judgments into computer algorithms covers the bases to pinpoint truly relevant information and better answers. What’s more, the personal touch it gives to search results represents a perfect fit with the mobile phone, which we’ve already established is an intensely personal device.

• First, it recognizes the rise of a participatory culture and the role of people in the equation. These are trends that combine to give individuals more of a say over their content experiences. Book marking, tagging, voting, blogging, and networking – all of this is possible on the mobile, allowing us to turn our conversations into content. The rise of mobile social networks and communities paves the way for us all to have more input into our search results.
• Second, it benefits from the increasing popularity of peer recommendation. A recent survey from Jupiter Research shows 64 percent of users will try a service or content recommended by a friend, and 69 percent will pass what they like along to between two and six friends. Naturally, search results – particularly those in response to queries seeking cool new music or good restaurants nearby – would benefit from some crowd-sourcing.
• Third, it taps into new mobile search behavior trends. Mobile search is no longer an action-oriented activity; it has become a recreational pastime. Recent user surveys conducted by comScore, and new research from made-for-mobile search engines Taptu and Abphone, reveal the main emphasis is on content discovery and new ways to amuse ourselves during long commutes or breaks in our daily routine. We do search for information, but we are also interested in cool new stuff, interesting trivia, and ways to have fun.

In summary, the idea of people helping people isn’t about idealism; it’s the basis for an ideal business model. In mobile search, where algorithmic search can deliver neither personalized search results nor peer recommendations, social search and variations that tap the wisdom of crowds to deliver the right mix of answers and entertainment have a clear competitive edge over the plain-vanilla search we know from the PC.

This post sets the stage for an in-depth look at cool new mobile search services – some in beta – sure to leave their mark, so please check back regularly.

Disclaimer: abphone, ChaCha and Taptu have collaborated with MSG on white papers and research.

Tags: abphone, ChaCha, Google. Microsoft, Long Tail, Mahalo, mobile commerce, Mobile Internet, Mobile Search, Recommendation, social search, Taptu, Wikia, Yahoo

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Content Discovery, Mobile Research, Mobile Search, Mobile Social Networking, Personalization. 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.