Mobileslate

Are we ready for Mobile Search? Can we make search engines like Google and Yahoo fit to the small screen (mobile phones)? It’s curious to note that as more companies migrate, setup outposts on WAP decks, the more confusion and chaos they are creating for the subscriber. I wrote about Google’s WAP search functionality and how it can be difficult to find digital content. However, if I wanted to use it as a Yellow Pages directory, merged with maps, then it does the trick quite nicely. But if I want to find the latest game from Glu or Usher’s latest digitized ringer, you’re in luck due to stacking of the WAP deck.

But what if you are trying to find something more obscure, say, “Caribbean Queen” by Billy Ocean, would I be able to find it easily? Or would it take me my entire morning commute sifting through the WAP deck and a couple of unsuccessful attempts texting in the search box. Frankly, unless it’s Hot, Popular, or Featured, chances are you won’t have the patience, nor the ability to easily locate the content you’re looking for. We are so accustom to point a web browser to a search engine, filter a couple hundred links on a large screen, and be on our way. But this experience has yet to translate onto the mobile side. So does this mean we have to create federated searches for all things mobile? At this point it seems like the big guys of Search are focused on what services they have and pretty much ignoring mobile digital content. One of the reason why is the level of integration between the Internet Portals and Mobile Operators is rather thin. Their incentive is next to nil, and they are definitely cut out of the revenue sharing between Operator and Publisher. But then why is the subscriber the one who ultimately loses, due to a poor experience on mobile?

I believe it’s another case of not understanding the customer. While it’s cool to show off to friends that the power of Google can be reached on my phone, I think many others have come to the realization that there is no way I could possibly sift through thousands if not millions of results given the state of bandwidth, screen size, and worst of all, the transcoding of HTML into WML or xHTML.

So what are we left with? Well, one idea is to have a company provide a search engine that you can bolt onto an Operator’s WAP deck and help subscribers find content. Everyone by now is familiar with the search bar on the web, so why not build that on the phone? Companies like Caboodle Networks who have launched their site semantical.org are attempting to provide a white label search for both mobile and wired Internet portals.

You can build a mapping of your content catalog (games, ringers, wallpapers, video, etc) and begin to build relationships between them; similar genres, artists, and more. Once you have that, you can start to build intelligent and meaningful relationships amongst all the content.This would inevitably allow more relevant content to be suggested to the subscriber and ultimately increase ARPU through making it easier to find content they want to consume. If Mobile Search is going to be Hot in 2006, it can’t simply be about retrofitting the technology from the Web. We need to address this specific device/screen and optimize for it by providing the subscriber the best experience and not just another channel of revenue by repurposing content from the Web, ad hoc.* Disclosure: This is a partial plug for Caboodle Networks.

Tags:   Mobile · search · user experienceNo Comments