Microsoft tells me all about mobile search

A lot of fuss has been made about the power of Microsoft's purchase of Tellme, for example with Jeff Raikes, President, Business Division, Microsoft, explaining their vision for using Tellme's technologies in the mobile search area as being fundamental to their strategy. "Frankly, today TellMe already does more mobile search support than Google and Yahoo combined", said Raikes.

But how much of the power of mobile search is actually tied up with the input/voice recognition component?  Not much I would suggest, while not denying the convenience factor.

For instance Omar Tawakol, Chief Advertising Officer, Medio Systems, recently said in Search Insider:

In practical terms, assuring a pleasing mobile search means a number of things, including: providing consumers a click-saving experience that returns answers instead of links; inferring a consumer's context from his or her device, location and other information within ranking algorithms; balancing the subscriber's short-term and long-term preferences to present personalized, relevant results that adapt to a consumer's changing context; and providing rich client interfaces with streamlined interfaces including custom shortcuts, auto-completion of search terms, or voice inputs to simplify the user experience. Mobile search will ultimately only see the same success as its online counterpart when it provides consumers with an experience that matches the consumer context.

Not much of that above is actually helped by the Tellme front end, which means that perhaps their backend is much further developed than meets the eye?

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Sponsored Links & Partner Sites: > TelecomWeb: Global Business News, Market Research and Competitive Analysis. > Wireless Business Forecast: Bridging Wireless Technology, Media And Your Business. > msearchblog: pushing the barrier on mobile search, advertising, recommendation, social networking and communities. > MEX: PMN Mobile User Experience conference, London 2nd/3rd May 2007. > MEX Conference Manifesto: GOOBILE supports Manifesto Theme 9 - The mobile experience is limited to voice and text by in-efficient search and discovery mechanisms. We think any service should be accessible from the standby screen and it should be as simple as dialling a number.

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Comments

[Peter Cranstone]

Walter,

You've nailed it. This is the most succinct description of the problem that I have seen to date.

Our solution provides the content providers with more context when it comes to mobile. We have the ability to supply "Who, What and Where" information in real time to search engines. This gives them more context. We have taken privacy into account and the customer always remains in control of every piece of data that they wish to share with the content provider.

Currently we're demonstrating real time live local search which automatically can receive inputs from GPS, Address, Zip Code & Area code - all without the mobile user having to type in anything more than the actual search request.

For more information and live demos please visit our web site. http://wwww.5o9inc.com

Cheers,

Peter