Chat with Daniel James Orange World product manager
Rating: Yahorange!
by Bena Roberts
Over the past few months Orange has made some significant changes to its mobile portal services. OrangeWorld has changed and personalisation and recommendation is the major new focus.
In our analysis publications I have documented these changes since April 2007. But after speaking to Daniel James I realise that my device has not been displaying some of the innovation and newness of the services. Daniel agrees that search is vital for the portal and the redesigned Orange World is focusing on intuitive navigation to assist steady content flow and streamlined experience.
For example on my Orange SPV Samsung the Orange Portal still doesn’t have a search box at the top of the page. Again on my Nokia 6880 the Orange portal is newer but not the very latest model. Only when I use my Nokia N73 do I see a marked change in OrangeWorld.
I spoke to Orange’s Daniel James about these changes. I will be rectifying some analysis on this and an update in the next Mobile Search Analyst. But an outline is available here.
The OrangeWorld mobile search box is now managed by Yahoo! The results are displayed in the following formation:
Sponsored results (Screen Tonic/Microsoft and Yahoo!)
Mobile web results (Yahoo!)
Web results (Google)
Orange own pages
Adult content (Pleasure Find)
Also the mobile search box on the new design finds itself in the middle of the page navigation not at the very bottom. This copies a similar pattern to the InfoSpace run Bites service which we also assessed in The Mobile Search Analyst.
Personal note – I am shocked that Yahoo! is doing this white label but this is actually what Yahoo!’s Michael Bayle said would happen when I met him back in April. In fact, in Monte Carlo he even quoted one of my GoMo News blog posts to me and said “Orange loves Microsoft“. When he said that he had a twinkle in his eye that I should have guessed something was going on.
Related News:
- Orange Partner Camp: Orange World is going to get very very sexy
- Chat with Mayur Pitamber Openwave Product Manager Mobile Analytics
- Scoop! Orange to launch Application Shop and Orange World stats
- Orange World changes and personalisation
- ORANGE ANNOUNCES THE LAUNCH OF AD-FUNDED VIDEO MAGAZINE SERVICE ‘ZAP!’ ON ORANGE WORLD
One Response to “Chat with Daniel James Orange World product manager”
OK so Orange have come back to me on this to clarify Yahoo!
The Orange Search box is still in house. Orange only takes a feed of sponsored, mobile web results, from them, everything else is in-house.
BENA: this is what I thought originally but the I think we had cross wires on the call.
Adult content (if keyword matches an adult term the user is taken to separate age-verified environment), otherwise the order is:
Orange pages, Orange objects in clusters (downloads, news etc), then Sponsored, Mobile Web and Web.
BENA: Got it; thank-you
Comment made on November 7th, 2007 at 3:18 pmLeave a Comment