I’ve written from time to time on the “real intention” behind Google’s free 411 service. I’ve long felt it was not a business desire to be in the voice services business as a 411 service provider; rather, it is a new channel for collecting huge volumes of voice utterances, from which it could build it’s own technology for voice recognition. Freeing itself from the shackles of TellME/Microsoft and Nuance - the two technology stalwarts in voice reco (who tend to vigorously acquire and defend patents), was pretty strategic.

John Markoff, NY Times technology columnist, highlights this evolving picture further, with an interesting profile article “Google is Taking Questions“. Markoff references a new (apparently not quite yet available) iphone app enhancement in Google’s search app.

411, local mobile | No Comments »

Sometimes humor provides an instructive lens into business reality!  The Onion just did an entertaining article entitled “iPhone Left in Hot Car for Three Hours“. With classic Onion wit, they indirectly observe how deeply personal mobile devices have become to our lives.

As I commented in a recent Kelsey Group panel, never before in the history of technology have people slept with a computer.

The bold new world of mobile devices with open applications and fast networks forever changes the way consumers will use the technology. We, in turn, need to adapt our thinking on how we engage users through these devices and applications.

This isn’t about a screen that needs IYP reformatted to do YP searches. In fact, search is tangential to the shift. This is about a rapidly morphing form of active, location-aware communications that is deeply personal. It ignites commentary, conversation and interaction. It’s not about “driving more searches that find advertisers”, it’s about inserting the advertiser into the conversation.

The future of local media and mobile is not about “mobile search”, it’s about live interaction with and among consumers.  If we think of this as a search problem, or as a new screen format, we’ll miss the fundamental opportunity to participate in the consumer conversation; it’s this dialog that will envelope and drive the shopping opportunity.

social, local mobile | No Comments »

I was really interested to see the “exit polls” from the weekend of iphone buying frenzy, to get a better sense of who is so obsessively buying the product, and for what reasons.  The Piper Jaffray interview results are very interesting.  A few stats that jumped out in my mind:

• 61% of 3g iphone buyers are Mac users
• 38% are replacing their prior iphone
• 85% bought for “new features” vs. 9% for “lower price”
• 46% will no longer use an ipod (up from 29% in gen 1)

I guess it’s no really big surprise, but to me this reinforces a huge success with the “low hanging fruit” buyer, not (yet) a leading indicator of mass penetration success. Close to two-thirds are apple zealots, and over 1/3rd are upgrading their existing iphone.

The most interesting trends are yet to come; clearly, the mass market is not about to spend hours in a retail line for a new phone/device.

Most certainly this is a game changing device for many reasons. However, the weekend’s results just don’t count, in my books.

local mobile | No Comments »

I’m bummed that I had to bow out of this year’s Where 2.0 conference; I had been slated to speak, and had a list of people to meet and sessions I wanted to hear. One of the most interesting sessions, moderated by Greg Sterling, was on the “monetization of maps and mashups“.

Following a blogger’s coverage of the session, I was really tweaked by one comment, roughly paraphrased by blogger John McKerrell, in attendance. From Skyhook, Jed Rice:

“When we started trying doing more local targeting and being able to insert a lat/lon.We had to flood adsense with a lot of local information to get any information from them at all. We had a click-through rate of 7/8/12% as if you can position ads around a relevant map you get a higher click-through. But there’s a problem that there isn’t enough ads to serve, requires a huge inventory to serve at such a granular level.”

This is a pretty important observation.

Experience is beginning to demonstrate that AdSense does not offer much hyper-local ad inventory.

(more…)

mobile search, maps, local mobile | 1 Comment »

It feels trite to talk to the upside opportunity for mobile device usage, and the derivative search and advertising opportunity. We’ve become numb to the hype, driven by the continued pattern of reality being misaligned with rose-colored powerpoint spin.

The new evidence is actually very noteworthy - this really feels like the first time that real usage on real devices in North America (a laggard mobile market) finally lends real credibility to the upside opportunity. (more…)

mobile search, local mobile | 4 Comments »

When you have little time and lots of money, your strategic move is obvious.

I thought I’d push out a few armchair quarterback suggestions on MS-Yahoo’s strategic moves in the local media space.

For simplicity, let’s call it MSY - plus, it just might get kind of MeSsY. (more…)

search, local social, Jabber, YP, strategy, maps, local mobile | No Comments »

The NY Times today highlighted an emerging issue that can be central to development in mobile local search - in the article “Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You“. No big surprises or revelations for those who spend time thinking about GPS-enabled applications, but it highlights the challenges of this dual-edged sword of opportunity and problem. (more…)

mobile search, local mobile | No Comments »

The news of Nokia’s acquisition of Navteq for $8.1B hit the news wire Monday, while I was at the SMX Mobile-Local show. Fascinating news! After the TomTom acquisition of TeleAtlas, it was only a question of when not if. I completely “get it”, and I’ve been scratching my head as to why this headline wasn’t stolen by Google or Microsoft.

the news…

Good coverage and context provided by NY Times, as usual. CNBC also did a nice piece with some added industry insight, but for a well outlined analysis and report form the news, check out Mike Dobson’s Telemapics blog postings (a guy with enough “map pioneer grey hair” to add real insight!). (more…)

social, strategy, local mobile | No Comments »

Local search with that promise gets my attention!

That’s a line from BMW’s announcement of (purportedly) the world’s first Google Local Search showing up on a dashboard. You can see photos and more details at Jalopnik, a niche news site for autophiles. Only available in Germany on BMW cars, it’s the next logical step from prior announcements from Google, Yahoo and MS on their “send to car” features. You can get a little orientation on YouTube here.

So, is the dashboard yet another media screen worthy of attention? (more…)

mobile search, strategy, maps, local mobile | 1 Comment »