Taptu – getting mobile search right

Taptu is a search engine for your mobile phone. Starting with music and fact-finding, they offer a load of content to help you find what you need quickly on your mobile.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Steve Ives, CEO of Taptu and Christophe Hocquet from Moblr, who are using Taptu to power their social media site.  Taptu have now “officially” launched, even though they have been live for some months now.

Taptu is unique in that they are targeting almost exclusively the mobile user.  Steve’s vision for Taptu is to have the best possible mobile search experience – tying in the social media aspects of all that content flying around today on social networking sites and making it simple to find and share.

Some of the things I particularly like about Taptu and their approach are:

• Free and fast – browser based and it also indexes and crawls videos, images, songs as well as mobile and desktop web pages
• It makes content sharing easy using social media networks and SMS with friends and contacts
• They will make money from sponsored links and ads – so the business model is well known and works
• The experience on the mobile is optimised for the handset – so it is a better experience while searching because you see made for mobile search results

Steve also showed me one of their architecture diagrams they would normally show someone under NDA.  What I took away from the discussion is they have really thought about not just the user’s mobile experience, but also how to hunt down and source content relevant to their community – a key thing for mobile social search.

He mentioned also that the Google guys had said some nice things about Taptu (which is unusual in the fiercely competitive space) – to which I explained that this was the Google MO for poaching staff and ahead of an acquisition – so he should be happy and worried in the same breath – not sure how he took this!

London Calling view:

• Taptu have a head start and a clear advantage because they are focused on mobile search
• They have got the user experience right and care about constantly improving it
• They aren’t just scraping any old content from the web – they actually have Humans helping to source and sift content!
• Each Taptu user search makes the whole experience better and more relevant for the next searcher
• Allowing users to share the search results will also have a viral effect

So, why not head over to www.taptu.comon your mobile phone – and if you are not sure what to search for – why not try their I’m bored link (great when mobile “snacking”) and you can see today’s top activity in the Taptu community.  Alternatively, try and find something obscure – perhaps something about your favourite hobby.  I’ll bet there is something about it on Taptu.

I also know Taptu’s Vero Pepperrell (she’s in my social network) and she is helping to ensure Taptu remains connected to their community.

Well done Taptu and I look forward to following your success.  Can I buy shares before Google buys you?

About Andrew

Based in London, The Actionable Futurist and former Global Managing Partner at IBM, Andrew Grill is a popular and sought-after presenter and comementator on issues around digital disruption, workplace of the future and new technologies such as blockchain. Andrew is a multiple TEDx and International Keynote Speaker.