Mobile Search is Finally on a Roll

Personal Decks, Content Aggregation Could Help Monetize Mobile Search

“The idea isn’t just to push out coupons that may or may not be relevant, but it’s really about offering personalized, almost concierge-like services,” explained Mark Disbrow, general manager for Alcatel-Lucent’s Geographic Messaging Services Platform (GMSP), announced at CTIA.

The location-driven services platform supports the delivery of finely targeted “push” messaging, advertising and social networking services to mobile users based on their location, which can be determined via GPS in the handset or triangulation of the nearest cell towers.

The GMSP uses the concept of geofencing, which establishes a virtual “fence” around a particular location or individual. When a mobile phone user crosses a given “fence,” it triggers the delivery of an SMS text message or multimedia message that is relevant to that individual and that location, such as a promotion for a particular store, or the presence of a friend in the area. Opt-in controls allow users to control the experience; subscribers can, for instance, sign up via a portal for offers from specific stores and within that, for specific types of goods and services. They also can choose when to receive such offers, and within which parameters.

“The idea is to take this away from the intrusive LBS that we’ve seen in the past, and make it relevant and wanted,” said Disbrow.

“This push idea opens up a lot more opportunities for advertisers to essentially reach out on a more regular basis than you would have by simply waiting for the user to query something, which is the traditional pull approach,” said Disbrow. “The two working together can give users a rich mobile Web 2.0 experience that is advertising-supported — best of all worlds.”

Getting Agg-ro

“Getting agg-ro” recently has taken on new meaning in the mobile space with applications that aggregate social networking, user-generated content and other Web 2.0 “personal media” sites into a single handy-dandy portal ripe for mobile advertising possibilities. At CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment 2008 in San Francisco the idea kicked into overdrive with AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless both launching their own social networking aggregation offerings.

It makes sense they smell an opportunity; with the sheer multiplicity of social networking sites out there, it’s hard to keep up with them all. The problem is that Verizon’s and AT&T’s on-deck aggregation apps, called SocialLife and My Communities, respectively, only provide access to MySpace and LiveJournal information, and a host of niche social networking sites like AsianAve and MiGente. No sign of Twitter, Facebook or other hot sites. So it will remain to be seen if the launches can be competitive with some of the other third-party offerings.

Meanwhile, No. 1 handset manufacturer Nokia used CTIA to showcase its continuing push into North America with services, including new functionality for its “Ovi” Web portal, launched nine months ago. Ovi means “the door” in Finnish and acts as a personal dashboard for PC and mobile phone-based Web content, including an online music and video store, MySpace and Facebook, Flickr photo sharing, GPS-enabled Nokia Maps with city guides, geo-tagging of photos, and the N-Gage gaming service.

A company called NewBay Software Ltd. is a carrier-focused pure-play player in the space, and at CTIA it launched version 2.0 of its LifeCache media upload client that enables subscribers to post and share user-generated content, such as photos and videos, with a single click. LifeCache also presents popular information from multiple online communities, including Facebook, Bebo, YouTube and MySpace, in a single feed.

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