MSearchGroove

In-Brief: The recent news that people-powered mobile search provider ChaCha is ramping up with the addition of two telecom veterans tells me that Brad Bostic, President and co-founder, is gearing up to make good on the roadmap he outlined in this exclusive podcast. Today, ChaCha is taking the wraps off a service that lets users call in their queries via a toll-free number, and gearing up to be sure mobile advertising is linked to more than just search results.

Regular readers will know I am passionate about vertical mobile search and keep a watch for companies that are decidedly different from the “usual suspects” we know from the headlines. It’s MSG’s remit to identify and profile alternative search engines in the mobile space, which is one reason why I was excited to see this post from AltSearchEngines (via email) last week. True to the title, it names five excellent mobile search engines - a welcome confirmation that it is indeed an electrifying time in the mobile search space. I’m looking forward to a briefing with Alex Muller, CEO of Slifter, a mobile search engine that made Charles Knight’s list over at AltSearchEngines during CTIA. If you are a search provider - and that includes local, multimodal, voice, visual, vertical or social — then please reach out to me directly.

A company I have followed from the start is ChaCha. (In fact, I’m proud that I was among the first the company briefed on its mobile aspirations.) I wrote about it in this article I contributed to the November 2007 issue of eContent Magazine, which I highly suggest you read for background and context. In a nutshell, ChaCha has developed a “search-with-a-guide” process that lets stumped searchers connect with a live person - in real-time and via an instant message chat - for answers (in the form of relevant links and results). In January, ChaCha brought its value prop to mobile, announcing a new service that allows users to text questions of any kind to 242242 (ChaCha on a phone keypad) and to receive text answers on their phone.

I caught up with Brad to ask about service usage and search queries, and drill down into his announcement (via his blog) that “ChaCha’s team is working to pioneer new models for mobile advertising that will deliver enhanced value to users.”

Listen to the podcast here. [10:21]

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• Web 2.0, Mobile Social Networking, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Local Search

In-brief: Between trips, meetings and meet-ups I have put together metrics MSG should report as a matter of record (in line with the MSG mission to be a knowledge resource). Here’s a double dose of stats that matter. Admittedly, I’m slightly behind, but should be back on track after CTIA. Incidentally, I still have some slots open and encourage you to pitch to MSG. Contact me directly or my PA at andrea@msearchgroove.com

MOBILE SEARCH: A new report and a great offer for MSG readers! (I’ve not only been speaking at conferences; I’ve been sealing deals with an exciting line-up of partners to provide rich content, exclusive metrics and special offers to the community. Check back regularly - because you’ll like what you see!)

In this case, it’s the new release mobile search report from Juniper Research. The report, which has cleverly divided mobile search into categories including local and on/off-portal content search, forecasts annual revenues generated by mobile search services will rise from $1.5 billion this year to $4.8 billion by 2013. Local search services will be the most popular sector with advertisers, attracting 40 percent of mobile search ad spend over the forecast period.

Not surprisingly, the China/Far East region will generate the most revenues from mobile search services over the next five years, followed by Western Europe and North America. A word of caution: Don’t get too upbeat about the lucrative link between search and advertising. “An ‘advertising overload’ might act as a disincentive to consumers and might ultimately limit adoption, while there are continuing public concerns over search engine usage of personal data,” the report concludes.

Order Mobile Search and Discovery, Opportunities and Markets 2008-2013 from CMS via this link and you’ll receive a free copy of The Worldwide Directory of Mobile Network Operators (GBP995 value), which lists 700 operator profiles and 2,900 named management contacts.

ADMOB: Thanks to Jason Spero, MSG gets AdMob’s monthly Mobile Metrics report first (!). But this time I was too busy with my travel to Thailand, and engaged with subsequent trips to mobile operators around Germany, to post it before today. As MSG has recognized the importance of this must-read monthly report from the start, and posted it as a matter of record, we’ll continue today with a look at the February Mobile Metrics Report and Ecosystem Events. This time the report is chock-full of valuable data at the country, manufacturer and device level - going a long way toward classifying its network traffic in a way that allows advertisers to target devices and the people who own them.

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• Location-based services, Mobile Research, Mobile Social Networking, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Local Search

In-Brief: SpinVox reveals its vision for mobile search and mobile advertising services that will harness its voice-to-text technology to pick up on clues in voicemail exchanges to deliver users relevant results in an unobtrusive way. It’s not here yet, but you can bet on some deployments this year as mobile search providers and operators take notice.

Talk about timing! I first met SpinVox co-founder Daniel Doulton last summer at the company headquarters in the U.K., a mind-meld during which we discussed the progress the company had made (its voice-to-screen technology now lets users post to their Facebook, Twitter and Jaiku sites by simply speaking into their mobile handset) and the potential for the same technology to supercharge mobile search and enable the delivery targeted mobile advertising. It was an invigorating exchange and I put in my request for a podcast when the time was right.

I got my wish this week and had an exclusive interview with Daniel just a few days before the news broke that SpinVox has raised more than $100 million in funding from a Goldman Sachs Group unit and other institutional investors. The cash allows the company to expand its presence in North America and introduce voice-to-text services in more languages. (The company has deals with 12 mobile operators and plans to double that number this year. It is negotiating with all the top U.S. network operators and expects to announce two deals in the next quarter.)

I’ll bet SpinVox also uses the investment to move its strategy of enabling what Daniel calls “implicit mobile search” a quantum leap forward.

The scenario: An exchange between friends looking for a suitable restaurant to meet might trigger the service to suggest a few nearby restaurants, complete with a link to a local map or even driving directions. “It’s a fascinating ability that we now have in the actual voice message conversion system, which obviously has a semantic ability. And by that I mean; it can actually link together intelligently, keywords and messages that would make up an intelligent request or a search query.”

Listen to the podcast here. [10:56]

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• Multimodal Search, Mobile Social Networking, Web 2.0, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Content Discovery, Local Search, Podcasts

In-Brief: On the evening before I left for my last trip M3 Mobile, a social networking service that last week launched it’s beta site in London, pre-briefed me on the service, which combines all the right buzzwords and approaches (ad-supported, location-based and social networks) to get audience and eyeballs. Special thanks to Kate Berg, who reached out to MSG and made sure I had more than enough material and interviews (including a Q&A with Tullio Siragusa, M3’s CEO) to do a deep-dive. BTW: I encourage more companies in this space to do the same as I am also preparing to present & chair at upcoming mobile social networking conferences/events in Europe and Asia. Always (!) interested in hearing your pitches. Contact me directly or my PA at andrea@msearchgroove.com for a briefing.

As MSG also tracks social networking (part of the brief to analyze all things at the intersection of content and context), I jumped at the chance to learn more about nimble newcomer M3. M3’s location-based mobile and Web platform is designed to facilitate face-to-face connections for people to socialize, and the ad-funded/sponsor-supported model is a big part of that. Granted there are similar offers gaining traction in the mobile space, but few have voice at the center of the exchange. And still fewer give a voice to grassroots organizations such as Cardboard Citizens, the UK’s only homeless people’s professional theatre company. I was intrigued, and caught up with Tullio for the inside track.

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• Mobile Social Networking, Location-based services, Personalization, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Local Search

In-Brief: As I explained in this earlier post, I’m in Phuket speaking at the 3rd meeting of the Mobile Search Expert Group (MSEG). No live blogging due to NDA, but I do have the green light to print this in-depth and exclusive Q&A with Holger Knoepke, EVP, Product Design & Provisioning, T-Mobile International. He talks us through his pick of key prerequisites for a profitable mobile search service and reveals why T-Mobile replaced Google with Yahoo as their “partner of choice.”

As regular readers may recall, an ankle injury forced me to miss out on Mobile World Congress, but the buzz that T-Mobile’s session on mobile search created convinced me to reach out to T-Mobile directly for a deep-dive into the presentation and an exclusive Q&A with the presenter. Thanks again to T-Mobile’s Klaus Czerwinski for arranging both.

So what precisely is the business case for mobile search? Holger Knoepke tells me the answer is a mix of models.

It’s about generating direct revenues (by monetizing sponsored links via the search results pages); communicating the brand (strengthening the brand by providing a superior user experience); and creating indirect revenues. He splits the latter into three approaches: driving content revenues by recommending relevant content and providing easy access to it; driving mobile advertising revenues by making customers return to the web ‘n’ walk portal because it provides the best search experience; and driving mobile access revenues by underpinning the “free Internet” message of the web ‘n’ walk proposition. full story »

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• Web 2.0, Location-based services, Mobile Social Networking, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Local Search

In-Brief: Chetan Sharma, independent consultant, mobile luminary and a co-author of the just released book, Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market, urges mobile operators to start acting like media companies, and gives them 2-3 years to get their act together before the Googles, Yahoos, Microsofts and Nokias of the world change the rules of the game - forever.

Of all the podcasts I’ve produced to date, this has been the toughest. The material was just too good to cut - but I had to in order to deliver the length you have told me you prefer. So, I do have a podcast of less than 15 minutes. Fortunately, Chetan understands my dilemma and is intrigued by the idea of coming back to MSG for a series of podcasts to deep-dive into the exciting mobile advertising case studies he has collected and elaborate on the do’s & don’ts of targeting. It’s safe to say Chetan will be back - and so should you!

One comment that struck me: Chetan is firm but fair in his plea to operators to focus on cultivating an ecosystem rather than compete with other mobile operators. But not all mobile operators are “thinking in their own little universe.” He gives high marks to Vodafone and Reliance for having a radical and refreshing view of the marketplace.

Listen to the podcast here. [10:55]

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• On-Device Portals, Personalization, Location-based services, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Content Discovery, Local Search, Podcasts

In-Brief: MSG speaks with Kate Edwards, CEO of Jentro Technologies, a German-based provider of mobility solutions, about ambitious plans to facilitate the development and delivery of location-based services, social networking and vertical content mini-apps (including search). Is it just another platform - or will it give Google & Co a run for their money?

A few months ago I would have shrugged my shoulders, but that indifference has turned to interest since I heard the inside track on Ö-NAVI, a world-first completely ad-funded navigation services scheme (based on Jentro’s white-label solution) deployed by DasÖrtliche, a top German directory service and local search provider. DasÖrtliche wanted to boost brand awareness, add more value to its local search service and drive incremental revenue - a checklist Dirk Schulte, a DasÖrtliche spokesman, assured me the company has completed.

In fact, the service has significantly expanded its portfolio of services and advertisers to include Volvo, the FAZ (a major German daily newspaper), and a partnership with Clever-Tanken.de which lets users find the nearest and cheapest gas stations.

As you can see for yourself, these stats from a Jentro presentation I caught during a recent and worthwhile Wireless World Forum mobile search & advertising event in London (reported here), show companies can adopt a mini-Google strategy and drive positive results.

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• Mobile Social Networking, Web 2.0, Location-based services, Personalization, Mobile Search, Local Search, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Podcasts

In-Brief: MSG’s Navigation Day @ CeBIT pre-event coverage kicks off (albeit a day late due to server issues) with an overview of Nuance, a provider of speech-enabled technologies and solutions for mobile search, navigation and in-car communications. Fatima Vital, a Nuance senior marketing director, provides a snapshot of mobile search use in the U.S. (where Sprint and Verizon offer Nuance voice-enabled search services), shares her checklist for an optimized voice UI and brings us up to date on Tegic (a former AOL company best known for its flagship T9 text input product, which Nuance acquired in 2007).

Nuance used this week’s CeBIT to showcase new speech solutions and put more marketing muscle behind its predictive mobile search offer known as T9 Nav. I followed this content discovery solution from the start, from the days that it was just a cool idea circulating around AOL and had yet to make its mark.

The product launches at the end of 2Q2008, and we have the chance to sign up for a special trial during CeBIT. Show delegates can download T9Nav here to experience first hand the mobile search and content discovery experience it allows. To be fair, T9 Nav does cover many of the bases to have a significant impact on the marketplace. However, there are also some striking similarities to Zi Corp. - and we can’t ignore the traction it’s getting, including a recent win that will see Zi Corp’s mobile discovery solution Qix picked up by Canadian mobile operator TELUS and installed on “select models” of phones and PDAs.

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• Multimodal Search, Location-based services, Mobile Research, Mobile Search, Mobile Music, Content Discovery, Local Search, Mobile Advertising, Podcasts

In-Brief: Some highlights from two weeks of research and interviews around mobile advertising for a Wall Street Journal special report timed to CTIA.

What are the mobile advertising models/approaches that will fly and why? The jury is out on this one but my discussions with a number of companies/executives including Bango (Ray Anderson, CEO), Millennial Media (Paul Palmieri, CEO), Mobile Discovery (David Miller, CEO), NearbyNow (Scott Dunlap, CEO), NeoMedia Technologies (William “Chip” Hoffman, CEO), and ScanBuy (Jonathan Bulkeley, CEO), have allowed me to place some bets. It was a special pleasure to connect with eMarketer’s John du Pre Gauntt, who has just this week finished a must-read mobile advertising report, and Chetan Sharma (a long-time supporter of MSG and one of its very first contributors), who, together with Joe Herzog and Victor Melfi, has quite literally written the book on mobile advertising.

The just released book, Mobile Advertising: Supercharge your brand in the exploding wireless market, expertly outlines the opportunities and hurdles ahead of the industry as it seeks to deliver clear and scalable value to the emerging ecosystem. I just today conducted a podcast interview with Chetan, so please check back Monday. This week is dedicated to coverage from CeBIT (MSG is a media partner) and kicks off tomorrow with a podcast with Nuance, a provider of speech-enabled technologies and solutions for PNDs and mobile devices.

First, my thanks to everyone who reached out to me. Of course, space constraints mean much of the material I collected couldn’t be included in the article, but rest assured there are many more writing projects and columns in the pipeline. I’m also fortunate that Scott, Jonathan and John have either agreed to a podcast - or already recorded one with me. Again, please check back regularly - I have a wonderful line-up for the next weeks.

Which brings me to my discussion with Scott Dunlap and a few points/stats he revealed that I must share…

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• Location-based services, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Local Search

In-Brief: For-the-record - a roundup of news & developments that matter. Companies covered: Blyk, Clear Channel Outdoor UK, Google, Jaxtr, Latin-Pak, LinkedIn, mobilePeople, MobiTV, Nokia, Opera, Skyhook Wireless & Xanga.

OPERA: As of this weekend (March 1), Opera is switching from offering Yahoo and making Google the default search engine for Opera mobile web browsers, which include Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. (BTW: Opera Mobile has been shipped on over 100 million handsets so far, including devices from Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and HTC. Some 35 million people use Opera Mini. Opera claims that every month, Opera Mini users browse more than 1.7 billion pages, with much of that traffic generated through the search function in the browser.) So why did Opera effectively dump Yahoo? Sources at the companies are predictably tight-lipped, but here are some theories to ponder while I wait for responses to my briefing requests.

Could Opera be nervous about MicoHoo (as this post suggests) and painfully aware that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is a direct competitor? Has Opera brought Google into the fold to avoid fragmentation (as this post suggests) and ensure a uniform and satisfactory user experience? Or has Google has effectively “bought” itself a mobile browser (as ReadWriteWeb ponders) and bet the farm on click-through to sweeten the deal? Hardly out of the question if you consider these reports that Google has already won over mobile operators with offers too good to resist… (It’s great -actually, an honor - to read that ReadWriteWeb points its readers to “the blog of mobile search specialists MSearchGroove ” for coverage. You can be sure MSG will have more soon.)

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• Location-based services, Mobile Research, Mobile Social Networking, Personalization, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search, Local Search