Chat with Brian Lent CEO Medio Systems on mobile search, ODPs, uSearch at CTIA
I walked into the meeting with Brian Lent from Medio Systems on the war path. I wanted to know about a number of services and I did see the look of amusement on Brian Lent’s face when I opened up my laptop with about 12 questions already written. He smiled and said, “you have come prepared, Bena”.
I decided not to speak or acknowledge the smile but to get down to the nitty gritty and get some live demos and answers. I wanted to utilise this hour, because I felt that I had missed out on real demos from media and squandered my time with the company in the past (my own fault).
So with both guns blazing, I launched into an attack and asked. “Has Medio underachieved in the past six months”.
He said, “absolutely not, but we still have a lot to do”. But we are in an absolutely great position gaining valuable uptake and most importantly traffic. Over the past year we have gone on deck, expanded our voice search catalogue, expanded the music downloads category for content on Get It Now Search.
He paused then he continued. We also are collaborating with SurfKitchen, working on BREW application that delivers high quality results and the T-Mobile ODP.
So then I asked. Medio vs Yahoo! who is winning?
Brian looked me directly in the eye and said – Bena, “we are not competing with Yahoo!”. There might be a time when we collaborate with Yahoo! The eco-system of mobile search and advertising is changing to a huge extent. We serve a different purpose to Yahoo! We don’t do image search but we have one of, if not the best mobile voice experiences on all devices in the market. He said, Yahoo is a brand but there are always brands wanting their own killer services. This is what we do and we do it well.
He then handed me over a phone and said, I don’t want you to review it yet if full – but this is the new T-Mobile ODP in the US.
I spent about 15 minutes looking through it and testing voice and search and advertising and I have 3 pages of notes on it –but I am not allowed to say anything else on it. Which is a real shame as the UI was hot and we spoke about clustering, results, answers, server farms, ad-inventory, My-Faves and loads more.
Suddenly I realised that I only had 15 minutes left of my interview. So I looked at Brian and said, “yikes, what have you announced here at CTIA, give me something that I can write about”.
Michael Cox, new marketing man for Medio said, “usearch and publisher search”.
I said, “yes”. Your press release of uSearch didn’t say very much at all – give me the inside.
Brian put down his sandwich and said, “uSearch”. uSearch is a mix up of terms. Medio’s uSearch is the whole mobile experience. It is a comprehensive on deck off deck contacts idle screen search that also includes voice.
We plug in uSearch to our content providers and then we index the content on keywords, ratings and meta data to deliver real time results.
I said , so is this what you are doing with SurfKitchen? He said, Surfkitchen was developing widgets. We can integrate the uSearch with the widgets for an ODP anyone can use great search experience. What we do with SurfKitchen is a comprehensive model based on ad revenue share.
Bena: Is the inclusion of search licensed or on revenue share?
Brian: Revenue share.
Bena: OK. What about publisher search.
Right, said Brian. Publisher search is out search engine experience taken off deck to publishers who put the search box on the WAP site. We do a deep index of their content and then we give them the rest of the internet to provide to users with a comprehensive search experience.
I said, “hmm. That means that with the uSearch you plug into the content. With the publisher search you deep index more content but then use the publisher search as a way to get other content out – increasing traffic”.
Brian said, “yes”.
So, I said, “that means that your traffic shoots up and your revenues by a marriage of both ends of the value chain. Publishers get good search and you become a distributor as well as a provider”.
Brian smiled. This time, so did I.
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