Chat with Bob Last Taptu Mobile Search– SVP Business Development

I first met Bob Last at the Mobile World Congress when it was called 3GSM and I have given him a terrible time over Taptu.

Why?

Because they were early to market, very ambitious and I wanted to be more impressed than I was.  Over a year on, things have changed. Taptu has matured and by gum the social assisted search service is good.
I spoke to Bob today and wanted to understand the changes and the business model. So I started off by asking Bob how the past year was.

Bob said that the big change for Taptu came in Barcelonawhen they improved the search and integrated a lot more services. The pure search engine became a one click search and share engine. Now users can send to Twitter or SMS instantly via Taptu.

I asked him how Taptu’s engine searched. After talking to Find.mobi yesterday I wanted to know about the differences between the pure mobile search engines. The answer was interesting.

Taptu searches social media first.This is includes blog posts, youTube, mobi sites. They do have an add me page – but use the search engine to get index the best social media sites. I pressed a bit deeper and Bob said that with social assisted search traditional SEO didn’t matter (more on this in mobileseonews.com tomorrow). He said that the aim was to get what was hot and popular on mobile fast. This drove uptake and addiction of Taptu.

I thought about this and I am sure this is what I have been arguing for nearly three years that on mobile the demand is for information NOW not then. Social media is about being informed and savvy and the long tail needs to be left for online.

So then I picked up my phone went to the mobi site and searched for GoMo News. I got a list of blogs that had written about me. I then clicked video and I got a youtube video from one of our parties which was great. I then clicked around a bit and have to say that the improvements are clear as crystal.

The tabs are ideal. You do a search for your name and you get all your social media. It found (not on the home page) but after a little discovery all of my mobile sites (doing a search for Bena Roberts) apart from gomonews.mobi (which might have a frames issue). But it did find my transcoded getmobile site which I thought was impressive.

I didn’t like the fact that it said “more images” and then showed the original four on the home page – but this is not really an issue. The saved searches worked very welland I did a search for Mobile SEO and realise that I need to create a mobile site for my SEO blog. The Zinadoo sites were also all there.

There is also a little button Tap Friends which is how you share filling out the form was a bit cumbersome – so I gave up. But if this option is online or you can login online and use the same password on mobile it wouldn’t be so bad.

Advertising remains the business model –but I did get some meat on a new business idea which I am not allowed to discuss. All I know is that Taptu is not a push over and some big things might happen in the social mobile search and networking space.

Before I finish, the lyric search is great. I typed in Love Me Do and I got songs blogs, images, wikis, news, music everything on the Beatles you could imagine. There is also a MORE tab which might work as a vertical search within the blog that lists over ten other ways of searching from Actors to TV. I asked Bob if federated mobile was the way forward and he said that Taptu was following the universal mobile search method.

I haven’t yet, but I will save Taptu as a bookmark and I will use it – especially for the lyric search.  Well done, the improvements are huge and I am glad I was negative about the company last year as this is a lot better.

Related News:

1. Lunch with Steve Ives and Bob Last Taptu
2. In bed with Taptu Mobile Search Beta
3. Mobile Search chat with Pierre Scokaert ABphone
4. Taptu sign deal with mobile video streamer ZooVision to provide mobile search functions
5. Taptu introduces new mobile search engine at 3GSM