Yelp: 27% of Searches Now from iPhone

Yelp said that in May it had 32 million unique visitors, making it one of the leading local sites on the Internet. The company also released some data about iPhone usage, which are quite impressive. This is verbatim from the associated Yelp blog post:

• On average, 27% of all Yelp searches come from our iPhone App. That number dips during the week when Yelp.com traffic surges. Then on the weekend, it moves up again as people pull out their Yelp mobile apps when they're on the go - a trend we've already been seeing for quite some time!
• Last month, over half a million calls were made to local businesses directly from our Yelp iPhone App. That's about 1 call every 5 seconds to a business as a result of Yelp.
• Nearly a million people generated point-to-point directions to a local business from their Yelp iPhone App last month.
• In the past 30 days, Yelp for iPhone has had over 1.4 million unique visitors.

Sites like Zillow and Trulia have expressed that about 10% to 15% of traffic comes from their mobile apps. The Yelp number is huge by comparison and shows how significant mobile has become to the company's overall brand and strategy.

Yelp's content and use cases, in most cases, are a direct fit for mobile. Non entertainment related verticals might not see the same levels of traffic and usage. But the data above illustrate that the mobile market and mobile strategies cannot be put off by publishers and advertisers for much longer.  

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Yelp has also taken another step in the direction of Foursquare et al by adding badges:

Now when a user checks-in to a combination of businesses, they will be able to earn "Yelp Badges." Badges you earn will help show off where you're checking in. For example, if a yelper loves to get their nigiri on at sushi restaurants, they can earn the "Sushi Sensei" badge . . . Once earned, badges can be shared with friends both via the Yelp iPhone app, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

If users are checking into the same businesses in a given time period and/or neighborhood, they can also earn "Royal" status. Got the most check-ins at a business? You're the Duke, good sir (or Duchess, for the ladies). Most Dukedoms in a 'hood? You're the Baron! Most in the city? You're the King! . . .

Just Dial: Another Attempt at Free DA

The free directory assistance business seems very compelling -- on paper. Almost 80% of the mobile market in the US doesn't have a smartphone. Directory assistance (411) costs $1.75 or more per call. Yet the market has failed to materialize despite repeated efforts by various companies, including Google and Microsoft.

Now a VC-backed, Indian company is trying it again with the US launch of 1-880-JustDial:

1-800-Justdial announced today the launch of its free, personalized directory assistance and category search services in the United States. Consumers can now dial 1-800-Justdial (1-800-587-8342) from anywhere in the country to obtain business listings and conduct category searches.

Justdial operators are available 24 hours a day and always provide one ring pickup service, enabling users to speak to a live person and obtain fast local search results or recommendations for nearby restaurants, movies, events, florists, plumbers, dentists, car rentals, or almost any other product or service under the sun.

Justdial offers more than simple local business search, making it quick and easy for people at home, at work, or on-the-go to receive information like listings and local recommendations, or even nearby hotels in a certain price range. Callers simply dial 1-800-Justdial (1-800-587-8342), reach a live operator that picks up within one ring and state what listing or category of product or service they are looking for by neighborhood, zip code or even intersection. Justdial sends callers relevant listings via e-mail or text message and also connects callers to the listing of their choice, all free of charge. Users can register their phone number and address for maximum speed and personalization when using Justdial, enabling the operator to recognize the user and provide recommendations and listings near their home, work, or any other registered address or location.

The service promises real people (probably Indian agents using the Internet) and flexible search parameters. We haven't tested the service yet so can't confirm or contradict any of the company's claims. Other services that offer "human-powered search" on mobile devices include kgb and ChaCha (although more and more queries are machine answered) -- and then there are myriad Q&A services such as Aardvark (Google) or Quora.

Just Dial said that it has proved the model in India, answering more than 70 million calls in 2009. 

A service like this behind a traditional 411 number would have a shot and customer loyalty and repeat usage. However I'm very skeptical that the service will break out and become a mainstream success. Jingle Networks' 1-800-Free-411 has been around for years and not been able to grow beyond a certain point.

There are two trends that conspire against these services:

• The rise of smartphones (now about 23% or 24% of handsets in the US)
• The inertia around traditional 411

Six Months Later Apple Buys Siri

That was fast. After launching its iPhone app late last year, barely six months ago, and raising approximately $24 million in funding word now comes that Siri has been acquired by Apple. Siri is an "artificial intelligence" platform that manages speech and text input and connects "natural language" requests to actions such as buying movie tickets, getting taxis or making restaurant reservations.

The Siri technology comes out of SRI with funding from DARPA and exists “in the middle,” between the speech recognition and the back end, tied to the third party APIs. There’s a very sophisticated “engine” and algorithm there that enables the service to understand queries and commands such as:

• “What’s going on for kids this weekend?”
• “Get tickets for 2 to Avatar in 3D IMAX  tonight”
• “Remember to contact Jay tomorrow about coffee”
• “I need a cab”

It seeks to move beyond "search results" to their ultimate objective: getting some task accomplished. Indeed in some respects it is/was the ultimate local-mobile application. Now Apple owns it.

In the growing myopia of "Google vs. Apple" coverage people can only see the acquisition as part of some larger "war" between the two companies or an effort to block or thwart the other. However, Siri's technology independently could well have broad application to the iPhone and iPad regardless of the existence of Google or its mobile ambitions. But it doesn't hurt in that horse race either.

Dan Miller has some insightful thoughts and perspective in his post. 

YPMobile Gets Voice Search

AT&T Interactive has added voice search to its YPMobile app. The speech technology comes out of AT&T Interactive labs, which previously released the quasi-experimental "Speak4It" local search app.

In my brief testing this morning I found the app does well with traditional business name and category queries. There were no mistakes. But it doesn't do well with "semantic" queries such as "What's going on this weekend for kids?" That sort of search is the specialty of "personal assistant" Siri, which does a good job with unstructured queries. 

In fairness to the YP Mobile app, most people have been trained to use voice search to do a version of directory assistance-style lookups. And for those it will do fine. There are now at least 10 voice search-driven local apps in the iTunes app store from Nuance, Google, Vlingo, Microsoft, AT&T and others.  

Voice search will at some point be a mandatory part of any local-mobile search tool. 

I also expect that at some point AT&T will offer a Buzz.com mobile app. It would be intriguing and useful if voice were integrated into that hypothetical app.

Glympse Enables Mo-Lo Sharing on Facebook

Glympse is a simple and elegant mobile app that allows "real-time location sharing" via mobile devices. Users who receive a "Glympse" (via email or otherwise) can see the movements of the person in real time on a map, as he or she travels to a destination. We wrote about it when the company launched a year ago. It has versions that work on the iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, Windows Mobile and of course now the iPad. Glympse continues to build out its offering and service and today announced real-time location sharing on Facebook:

Glympse goes beyond static "check-ins" or a simple map showing your location, and allows iPhone™ and Android users to quickly update their status via their mobile phone so their Facebook friends can follow their real-time movements on a dynamic map, for a set period of time.

It also works via Twitter too (although you only get the link via Twitter and must click away for the rich media experience). 

The person receiving the "Glympse" doesn't need any software online or on a handset to see the map and movement. That functionality has now been extended to the Facebook news feed so that Glympse user movements and the related map can be viewed in the Facebook news feed like you might view a video in-line.

Here's a screenshot: 

Glympse users can share their location and subsequent movement with one person or many depending on whom they choose to notify. (What's not entirely clear to me is whether, when I send a Glympse to my wife or friend, all their Facebook contacts get to see my movements too. I supsect there are controls and that's not the case.)

The video below shows a demonstration of how it works and how it operates on Facebook:

Glympse has lots of privacy controls so its not a stalker app. Even if someone forgets that Glympse is on -- it requires multitasking support to work "in the background" so won't work continuously on the iPhone until OS 4 -- it will expire after a limited duration. 

I also find it interesting that, from a positioning standpoint, the company is now trying to ride the "check in" wave, which makes sense: "Glympse . . . goes beyond static "check-ins" or a simple map showing your location . . . "

I think the Facebook application and integration will drive considerable awareness and growth for Glympse. There's tremendous utility here for people, but the new Facebook integration adds a novel and "fun" dimension as people can now post their movements to their networks (e.g., trip across the country, etc.).

Quora: A New Q&A Engine Emerges

Social search/answer engine Aardvark was recently acquired by Google for $50 million. Now former Facebook employees have created a very similar new service, Quora, that very much resembles Aardvark and to a lesser degree competitors kgb and ChaCha, which recently launched a Facebook site/service.  

Quora offers users the ability to specify areas and topics of interest and expertise, and ask the community open-ended questions on any subject. There are some other novel features, such as the ability to follow topics, specific questions and people. It also reminds me a little bit of LinkedIn Q&A.

Quora has reportedly raised $11 million in funding. 

kgb Launches 'Answers' Website

kgb has launched a new "answers" website that leverages the company's database of information and historical answers to user questions. The database returns a list of up to six possible matches to each query (see below).

In about 10 quick and pretty varied searches I performed off the top of my head there were answers or responses to nine of them. The one question the service didn't "get" was: Which is healthier blueberries or kiwis? The question is automatically populated in a field for submission to a human agent if the user wants additional information or the desired answer isn't there among the choices.

As an aside, there's also interesting data that can come out of this -- and which the company should develop -- around trending topics and questions (as with search queries) that reflect news events and popular culture. 

Here's an example of what an answer page looks like:

This expands the service considerably, which also offers mobile apps and an SMS option. While there are ads on the website the primary model is per-use fees of $0.99. However, the mobile apps allow for similar exploration and discovery of a certain amount of information for free.

Competitor ChaCha is entirely ad supported and now relying heavily on its automated database and less on human agents. Aardvark, just acquired by Google for a reported $50 million, is a peer-to-peer Q&A network in mobile and on the PC. It's also free and had only an embryonic business model surrounding the concept of transactions or affiliate hand offs, similar to what Siri is doing.

While ChaCha has struggled somewhat to find advertisers willing to take the plunge (despite good metrics), kgb also faces challenges in growing usage amid a sea of free offerings in the market. However this new kgb Answers site should help increase the visibility of the service and potentially boost frequency and engagement.

In a discussion with the company last week, I was told its Super Bowl commercial created a massive traffic spike and almost crashed the company's systems, which reportedly survived the onslaught. 

ChaCha Now Answering 1M Questions Daily

ChaCha introduced a new Facebook app that submits questions to users' Facebook networks and to ChaCha simultaneously:

With ChaCha's Facebook App, when individuals pose a question to any friends within their social network, the question is also automatically submitted to ChaCha. ChaCha rapidly returns an answer from its huge database of hundreds of millions of answers. ChaCha will show up as another friend with an answer to the Facebook user along with answers from their network of friends. Users can also select "add to profile" to get a permanent "Ask ChaCha" prompt on their profile pages.

Additionally, Facebookers can select "share" when they submit a question, and the question and answers will post to their friends' Facebook walls. Individuals receive points for questions they answer for pure recognition and fun, and based on points attainment, users receive different titles which are displayed on a leader board.

It allows users to ask select members of their networks or the entire network. 

There are a few interesting things going on here in my mind:

• This turns ChaCha into a Yahoo Answers-like service on Facebook
• Facebook has this capability itself but it hasn't really developed fully on its own; this app (if successful) might further accelerate the creation of a Q&A culture on Facebook
• ChaCha makes money through mobile advertising and by showing ads on its PC website, so it is relatively "agnostic" about where questions come from 

Google just bought Aardvark for $50 million. ChaCha might be attractive to Microsoft or another potential buyer for similar reasons; however 90%+ of ChaCha's answers are coming via an index of previously answered questions for cost/efficiency reasons. That database will provide the answers for these questions rather than real-time human responses; Facebook provides the human answers in this case. 

The company also says it's answering a million questions a day. Though very impressive that's much smaller volume than a conventional search engine.

ChaCha has raised $52 million in several funding rounds.

Related: ChaCha Growing, Now It Needs More Advertisers

Update: CEO Scott Jones provided the following clarifications and addition information to me in email:

Yes, we are at a million answers a day… which is less than online search, but perhaps a better comparison is that we’re ahead of google’s mobile text answers service which has been out for a few years AND it is radically higher than aardvark’s daily answers (through both web and iphones).

In addition to facebookers answering questions, we also will continue to have guides answering questions. Both human/social ingredients are important to provide relevance (which google lacks), accuracy (which google also lacks, hence the million results dumped in your lap for you to figure it out), and speed (which aardvark lacks even when they sometimes do provide an answer).

kgb Shows Super Bowl Ads, ChaCha Tracks Favs

kgb offered a couple of commercials (that I saw) last night during the Super Bowl. I enjoyed the sumo wrestler spot especially and thought it was effective. Unlike many commercials broadcast during the game the humor and content of the spot was directly tied to the brand and the service.  

This morning ChaCha put out a release that found the Doritos commercials were the favorites of the teen and young adult ChaCha user base:

ChaCha, the service that allows users to go online, call or text questions on mobile phones and receive free answers within minutes, says that a poll of its users, primarily teens and young adults, who asked questions during the Super Bowl last night showed that their favorite commercials were for Doritos. The ones they disliked most were for Go Daddy and the one most talked about, as measured by text traffic, was Denny's, mostly asking where was the nearest location of the restaurant to collect their free meal on Tuesday. Inquiries about the teams involved also skyrocketed with 60,000 (about 10x the norm) asked throughout Super Bowl Sunday.

Here's the kgb "I Surrender" commercial. 

In general most of the commercials last night I thought were pretty weak. "Green police" (Audi) was another commercial I liked quite a bit. 

Aardvark: Mobile Users More Active

We've been writing about Aardvark since before its launch. I originally characterized it as an "answer community," but the company recently adopted the moniker "social search engine," which is a bit more familiar and something of an established "category" of search engines.

Last week Aardvark co-founder Damon Horowitz (one of the architects of its algorithm) and Sepandar Kamvar (who was behind Google's personalized search and now teaches at Stanford) wrote a research paper called “Anatomy of a Large Scale Social Search Engine." The document is something of an homage to an earlier paper written by then Stanford grad students Sergey Brin and Larry Page "Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine."

The paper goes into how queries are analyzed and routed among people and offers a great deal of interesting information and data that I won't summarize here. You can get the report and take a look if you're interested. What I'm going to highlight is the distribution of queries:

Source/image: Aardvark

A substantial portion of these fall into the traditional "local" (offline) categories as one might expect. But the range of queries is quite broad: people looking for advice and general information from "experts." Furthermore, here's what the paper says about mobile usage of Aardvark:

Mobile users had an average of 3.6322 sessions per month, which is surprising on two levels. First, mobile users of Aardvark are more active than desktop users. (As a point of comparison, on Google, desktop users are almost 3 times as active as mobile users.) Second, mobile users of Aardvark are almost as active in absolute terms as mobile users of Google (who have on average 5.68 mobile sessions per month). This is quite surprising for a service that has only been available for 6 months.

We believe this is for two reasons. First, browsing through traditional web search results on a phone is unwieldy. On a phone, it’s more useful to get a single short answer that’s crafted exactly to your query. Second, people are used to using natural language with phones, and so Aardvark’s query model feels natural in that context. These considerations (and early experiments) also suggest that Aardvark mobile users will be similarly active with voice-based search.

Mobile usage is more active than PC usage; this makes sense given the many information sources on the PC (alternatives to Aardvark), as well as the challenges of using conventional search on mobile devices (notwithstanding voice search). 

Aardvark, kgb and ChaCha exist along a continuum in a broadly similar category of peer-to-peer search -- a kind of DA 2.0. The three have different business models and different degrees of usage and penetration. Aardvark, similar to Siri, ultimately seeks to make money from affiliate referrals (but may develop a premium version for certain segments of users). ChaCha is entirely ad supported; kgb uses a more traditional per query consumer-pays model.

Free 411 Offers iPhone, Android Apps

Free DA provider Jingle Networks (800-Free-411) has launched iPhone and Android apps. They're generally useful and visually appealing but otherwise unremarkable, directory style apps. The noteworthy thing is that the company is seeking to grow volume and extend the brand through these apps. It also offers additional advertising opportunities for Jingle in mobile. 

Jingle says that it does about 15 million calls per month or 180 million per year, compared with billions of calls annually in the US directory assistance market. Jingle is arguably the best known of the "free DA" providers, followed by Google's Goog 411 service. The most complete is Bing 411, powered by Tellme.

Somewhat strangely, the public has not raced to adopt these services as once was expected (despite the money savings they offer). Lack of awareness is one factor, as is "inertia" around the number 411. Yet traditional directory assistance volumes also are in significant decline in the US. The decline of landlines and the rise of smartphones are likely also directly affecting traditional DA. Smartphones in particular make content and information available to users that far exceeds what is typically offered on a DA call.

kgb, which operates a "wholesale DA" business as well as a consumer-facing information services in the US and Europe, has reacted to the market with clever "reinventions" of the traditional offering on the iPhone (kgb answers and Knowtopia), which adds a game-like dimension to the service. The company is also doing Super Bowl advertising in an effort to further build awareness. 

kgb Expands its Mobile Footprint: Adds RIM Phones and New Entertainment App for iPhone

Text answer provider kgb continues to broaden the depth and breadth of its service offerings by expanding its roster of supported phones to include popular RIM-branded smartphones while, at the same time, delivering a new "entertainment" app, called Knowtopia, to iPhone owners. Today its flagship, premium application - kgb Answers - is available to owners of the Blackberry Curve 8300 series™, Curve 8900™, World Phone 8800 series™, Bold 9000™, 9600 Tour™, and the Storm 9500 series™.

As we noted here, the app launched for iPhonea and Android-based devices in October. It marked a radical "revisioning" of the text-answering procedure, making it visually interesting and more entertaining. With Knowtopia, kgb takes the entertainment aspects of the answer business to the next level, transforming it into a never-ending mobile trivia contest. This is an organic extension of kgb's core resource, the network of "special agents" and the database of knowledge (both questions and answers) that they have compiled over the past year of operation.

Knowtopia seems like an ideal "time sink", akin to Twittering, but more conducive to face-to-face interaction. The application intersperses poll questions with trivia questions to promote interactivity. It also acts as a portal into the kgbkgb SMS text-based answers sevice reached through the 542542 short code. Thus, the new application extends the kgb franchise into the entertainment realm in a way that is tightly linked to the company strategy of delivering content on a pay-per-query basis. 

Vlingo Top Search Terms/Categories of 2009

Vlingo released what it calls the top 10 voice-powered mobile Web searches of 2009:

1. YouTube
2. Facebook
3. MySpace
4. Weather
5. Movie Times
6. Twitter
7. Yellow Pages
8. MapQuest
9. craigslist
10. White Pages

On first glance, this list is considerably different than Nielsen's top mobile sites of 2009:

1. Google Search
2. Yahoo! Mail
3. Gmail
4. Weather Channel
5. Facebook
6. MSN Hotmail
7. Google Maps
8. ESPN
9. AOL Email
10. CNN News 

Here's Yahoo's top PC search queries list of 2009:

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twilight
3. WWE
4. Megan Fox
5. Britney Spears
6. Naruto
7. American Idol
8. Kim Kardashian
9. NASCAR
10. Runescape

Here's Google's main list:

1. michael jackson
2. facebook
3. tuenti
4. twitter
5. sanalika
6. new moon
7. lady gaga
8. windows 7
9. dantri.com.vn
10. torpedo gratis

As TechCrunch correctly points out the Vlingo list is "action oriented" -- people trying to accomplish some objective out in the world or on the go.

As we long ago discovered people calling directory assistance (the earliest form of "voice search") were usually “in the car" (where other search methods are more difficult). DA callers also emerge as “qualified” sales prospects typically on their way to potentially conduct a transaction in a store or other offline business.

The presence of YouTube on the top of the Vlingo list is curious, although smartphone users consume a great deal of mobile video. The presence of social networks however is consistent with broader mobile Internet trends.

The Vlingo search query results above are coming, of course, via Google or Yahoo search. So in that larger context, there's general consistency between the Vlingo and Nielsen lists above. However, I wonder if the "yellow pages" and "white pages" queries are not "yellowpages.com" or "whitepage.com" but stand-ins for a broader range of local and business or people searches.

My belief is that while mobile search queries will skew local in the near term they'll be generally comparable with PC search queries over time. 

WhitePages.com Now on Android Devices

WhitePages.com follows up its popular iPhone app with a full-featured one for Android devices. This follows the company's successful launch of Caller ID as a stand alone Android application (paid app). The Android app largely mirrors the iPhone app and features:

• People Search
• Business Search
• Reverse Phone Lookup
• Add to Contacts
• A free seven day trial of Caller ID (not on the iPhone). After that it costs roughly $14 per year.

Here's a video demo and tour of the Android app's features:

WhitePages.com is hugely successful, if seldom discussed, online, with roughly 19 million monthly users in the US. 

Free DA: the Market That Never Was

It's a mystery in a way that the free DA market simply hasn't materialized as we at one time expected. Logically it should have because these services represent a mass-market form of local mobile search and a seemingly perfect ad platform. But just as PPCall never really developed online (though now there's movement again) the free DA market is weak at best and already stroon with failures.

I was struck by a column from TMPDM's Gregg Stewart in which he exposed some directory assistance calling data (derived from the company's annual study with comScore on the local market). The data were collected in July (US Internet users, n=4,000). Stewart said the survey showed "23 percent of mobile users access directory assistance as part of their local search process." 

In our ealier research the data reflect that 20% of mobile users called DA, so largely consistent (with a smaller sample). In April, we found that the majority of mobile DA users (61%) call DA/411 "a few times a year."

In an 2007 survey Opus conducted, the percentage was basically the same: 61% called DA from a mobile phone "once every three months." Thus, for most, DA calling is relatively infrequent and that's not likely to change. If anything usage and DA calling frequency should decline as voice search and mobile Internet access grow. 

Here's what TMPDM and comScore found in July, 2009 about the distribution of calls from that 23% of the survey respondents who called DA from a mobile phone:

Source: TMPDM-comScore (July, 2009)

Below is the distribution from our most recent survey; note that traditional 411 is not a choice, so it's likley represented in "another 411 service" or "none of these." 

Source: Opus Research/Internet2Go (April, 2009) 

In both charts I don't believe that people are calling "800-Yellowpages" as much as they report. I think they're responding to what seems like a familiar brand. And many of the services (e.g., 411-Metro) in the comScore chart are now defunct. 

The free, ad-supported DA market at one time seemed very logical and held great promise. I had called it "local-mobile search for the rest of us." But the "rest of us" are buying smartphones, which largely emerge as a replacement for such services. Plus the per-use charge of conventional DA is an inhibitor for many, though not all, people. 

Anecdotally marketers I've spoken to have reported good ROI from use of 800-Free-411 but the volumes for any given category and city are low so it can only be seen as a supplement to other digital or mobile marketing efforts. 

In general the carriers seem to be neglecting their services:

• 800-Yellowpages (AT&T)
• 800-THE-INFO (Verizon) 

And the search engines (Google, Bing) are maintaining their services but not promoting or continuing to develop them. There is a significant role for "voice search" to play in the mobile world but it doesn't appear the primary locus of activity will be free DA services.

Free 411 Uses Contest to Boost Call Volumes

Free, ad-supported directory assistance has gone from the hypothetical growth engine for mobile ad revenue in some analysts' forecasts to a marginal segment in the mobile ecosystem. The largest and most visible provider historically has been Jingle Networks' 1-800-Free-411. However I suspect that call volume growth has stalled there.

That's what I surmise is behind a new contest to attract usage:

The nation’s leading provider of free directory assistance, 1-800-FREE411, announced today the launch of a “30 Days of FREE411” sweepstakes. Beginning November 1, 2009, every person who requests a phone number from 1-800-FREE411 has a chance to win $411 on the spot, with two randomly selected callers awarded the cash prize daily. In addition, every caller in November will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a trip to Boston and a shot at the grand prize of $411,000.

At the beginning of December, one lucky caller will win an all-expense trip to Boston for two. During their two nights in Boston, the winner will play a game where they choose one cell phone from 411 available phones. Each phone is awarded a value and the winner will walk away with a minimum cash prize of $4,100, with one of the 411 phones valued at $411,000!

The major carriers initially announced free, ad-supported initiatives (i.e., Verizon, AT&T) but they've been neglected because ad-supported DA hasn't taken off and their traditional paid businesses are cash cows -- though with declining volumes. 

The chart below reflects that despite having access to the Internet on a mobile device, a large number of people see 411 as a resource they'll continue to use. However smartphone users tended to agree with the statement in larger numbers. 

AdMob's September Metrics: Android Rising

AdMob's latest monthly metrics report shows that Android-based handsets are growing as a percentage of overall requests. This month's report also shows the rise and fall of various handsets over a period of nearly three years. AdMob also takes pains to counter criticism it has received by being very explicit about what its data do and do not reflect:

The report is based on the ad requests we receive from our network of more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and iPhone and Android applications. The data contained in the report is a measure of mobile data usage and does not represent the traditional view of market share based on the number of handsets sold.

And now for the data:

• In September 2009, the list of the top 10 devices in the US included five with touchscreens, six with Wi-Fi capabilities, and six with application stores.  These devices are responsible for a much higher percentage of mobile usage than their share of handsets sold.
• In September 2009 42% of requests in the US were made from Wi-Fi capable devices. 18% of actual US requests were made over a Wi-Fi connection in September 2009 compared to only 5% in September 2008.
• Devices running on Android accounted for 17% of smartphone traffic in the US in September 2009, up from 13% in August 2009. The HTC Dream (G1) was the number three device and the
• HTC Magic was the number 10 device in September 2009 in the US. As with the iPhone OS, much of the Android traffic in AdMob’s network came from applications.

The following tables reflect handsets responsible for mobile Web and app views on the AdMob network (US and UK). Note the shifts from 2007 to 2009: The rise of Apple, HTC, RIM and Samsung in the UK; and the fall of Motorola (and to some degree RIM) in the US. 

The following compares US smartphone OS share on AdMob's network in Decemberr 2008 vs. September 2009 (bottom):

• iPhone -- 2008: 48%, 2009: 48%
• Android -- 2008: 2%, 2009: 17%
• Windows Mobile -- 2008: 15%, 2009: 5%
• RIM -- 2008: 18%. 2009: 14% 
• Symbian: 2008: 2%, 2009: gone
• Palm/WebOS: 2008: 9%, 2009: 10%

None of these are market share numbers per se, as AdMob is now careful to point out. But they do reflect directional trends in the broader market.

New Apps Add Engaging "Gaming" Element to kgb Answers Service

Text answers service kgb this morning announced the release of an app for the iPhone and Android platforms. The app on either platform costs $1.99 and offers three free answers. After that the cost is $0.99 per question.

The competitive positioning of kgb Answers emphasizes the fact that there are "special agents" (humans, often college students) behind the scenes who can provide a more direct and efficient response to a question on the go vs. conventional search, which requires sifting through links on the small screen.

Previously the kgb service was only available via SMS at kgbkgb (542542). However the new iPhone and Android apps entirely change the nature of the experience and even turn it into something of a game in certain respects. I haven't yet downloaded the Android version, but I spent some time yesterday with the iPhone version.

I was impressed by the creative "reimagining" of the kgb service and the way the additional features and content expand it significantly. Here are some screenshots that offer a sense of the iPhone version of the app:

The app's home screen allows users to flip through a broad range of previously asked questions, mirroring the Q&A "scroll" on the company's site. If you want to find out the answer to one of these questions, you can submit the question and get the answer free of charge. Some example questions from just a few minutes ago include:

• What bird can fly 11,000 miles in about 90 days?
• What is the tallest mountain in the USA?
• What two unrelated countries have the same flag?
• What land animal stays pregnant for nearly 22 months?

The app also gives users the ability to explore related questions and answers free of charge. For example, one of the free questions I submitted was "What is the infamous first word of the movie Citizen Kane? (Answer: Rosebud). The answer page provides a list of several related Citizen Kane questions and answers that users can browse for free.

All of this free content creates a kind of trivia-game experience (in many contexts), which is a way of getting users engaged and to recognize the value of the service. In addition the app takes advantage of integration with the iPhone. Accordingly, if there's an address in a response or answer the app provides a map. Answers can also be shared via email or Facebook and are saved and can be searched or starred as favorites for later access.

All these features make the kgb app much broader and more useful than the traditional SMS version of the service. 

Arguably the only direct competitor to the core kgb Answers service is free, ad-supported ChaCha, which does not have an iPhone app at this point but provides the ability to call a phone number and speak queries instead of typing them. There are a range of other, somewhat more indirect competitors the closest of which is probably Aardvark, which relies on a network of peers to answer questions. There's also Yahoo! Answers (and similar Q&A services). Of course Google and other traditional search engines are competition as well. However, as I suggested above it's often frustrating to click back and forth through a bunch of links on the small screen. Google in mobile is fast but often paradoxically inefficient.

Because kgb Answers is a premium service and consumers pay per use, the company doesn't have to worry about advertising coverage or clicks (though one might imagine selective advertising at some point). However it does have to demonstrate enough value to convince users to keep paying. Generally that means it must deliver better answers than can the other free services or Google. Yet the iPhone App also changes the nature of the kgb service into something more engaging and entertaining than a straightforward Q&A service.

We understand that kgb has some other interesting apps in the pipeline as well. The company also operates the 118 118 and 118 218 telephone-based services in the UK and France.