Social-assisted search -
a new direction for mobile search?
Steve Ives Oct 2007
Slide 2
Taptu - 8 key facts
Founded: September 2005
Expertise: search algorithms + mobile user experience
Team: 27 at Science Park, Cambridge, UK
Service launch: across Europe and America from October 2007
Innovation: 12 key patent applications filed in mobile search
Passion: creating a simpler, faster, more reliable mobile search
Existing Teams: Development (10), Content research (7), Mktg (3) User experience (2)
Investors: Sofinnova and 3i initial round in December 2006
Founders: Steve Ives, Stef Butlin, Bob Last (ex Trigenix, Qualcomm)
Slide 3
New mobile ecosystem
More bandwidth: EDGE, HSDPA, WiFi phones, WiMax
More processing power & memory: enabling big improvements in user interfaces (iPhone)
Increasing off-portal mobile internet traffic(10-20% in US, 40-60% in W. Eur)
More mobile-friendly Web content (5.7m dotMobi and WAP pages, up from 2m over 12 months)
Slide 4
Implications
Mobile browsing will take off, especially off-portal
Clusters of devices emerging:laptops (0.8-1.2MP), HiPhones, (160-300KP), MidPhones (80KP) , LoPhones (<40KP)
As content broadens, search becomes the de-facto interface to all mobile content
But mobile search must work well across all device clusters
Slide 5
Reality check: mobile search today
Sources: Nielsen Netratings May 2007, M:Metrics Feb 2007, Pew Internet May 2005
Desktop internet: 490bn searches pa
Mobile internet: 3.1bn searches pa
Small screen issues- need for brevity- 10 taps or under
Mobile network issues- network latency- inspection of results- data charges
Relevancy issues- desktop Webcontent often not mobile-friendly
Slide 6
The Smyth & Cotter experiment
5 10 15 20 50
100
80
60
40
20
0
% users
Number of clicks + scrolls
12
Smyth + Cotter Springer Verlag 2002
Click-distance model of mobile navigation
Mobile Search Engine 1 (36)
Slide 7
Lateral thinking needed
Slide 8
The Long Tail
10 10000Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine, Oct 2004
90%
10%
Sexy
Britney
Pamela Anderson
1,000X
Social Web+ user-generated content
Slide 9
Social metrics
Slide 10
Social graph
Slide 11
Taptu architecture
Purifiers
extensible for new types
searches
results
Wiki Music Travel Film/TV News
Indexes,ranking& metrics
CSOs
Web feeds
query server
Device info User history PagePack
Trustedsources:
WikipediaOther wikis MyspaceTripadvisorIMDBetc+Mobile Web
Other
Knowledgebase
Location
Slide 12
Click-distance analysis
5 10 15 20 50
100
80
60
40
20
0
% users
Number of clicks + scrolls
12
Smyth + Cotter Springer Verlag 2002
Social-assisted(music, fact-finding)
Conventional
Slide 13
Summary
Mobile content growing fast, as is mobile browsing
Realization that search is the de-facto interface to the online world, as content increases
Mobile search needs to work better - usability gap
Social-assisted mobile search can drastically improve usability – 30 clicks down to 8
Now we need to extend to all the other categories, from 25 items to 1 billion items
Slide 14
starting with music & fact-finding:
www.taptu.comhttp://taptu.mobi