Lunch with Steve Ives and Bob Last Taptu

I met Taptu founder Steve Ives and SVP Bob Last for lunch at Browns in SoHo. I wanted to squeeze Taptu because even though I liked the last release of the search service – I didn’t understand the concept of Taptu and what the future was for the company.

So I met Steve and Bob with a loaded gun. I am sure I scared them when I got out my 160 page fat notebook and pen and started off firing questions before we even finished saying hello.

After commenting and giving Taptu the overview of my new company Visibility Mobile – I smiled and said, “I was ambitious”. Steve Ives then stopped, looked at me and said, “So is Taptu”.

So, I said, “what is your goal?”

He responded, “to be the biggest brand in mobile search”.

I coughed, smiled and thought to myself this is going to be a great interview. What happened next was nearly two hours of intense discussion on mobile search and brands, algorithms and consumer behaviour. 

Yes, consumer behaviour. I say this as it was a surprise for me. Many mobile search companies put the technology first. But what Steve said was that Taptu had monitored the market. Consumer behaviour was the way in which its search services would beat the competition. Taptu knew the market and had labels for what market segments the company was targeting and how.

I continued to push on this line of thought because my belief is that mobile search will become the face of the mobile Internet and the key way to discover or find content. But, what I thought was that in order for this to happen, Mobile Search Engines needed to start thinking like operators.

Taptu is doing this.
Steve walked me through the search behaviour and different consumer patterns of what Taptu had found to be the most important consumer target markets.

I will explain:

Taptu segments its consumer groups into four areas. Unwired Socials, Digerati, Pioneer Youth and Careerist.
1. Unwired Social – this is the blue collar market. They are the people that love to be online but work outside or in factories where the only way they can get online is via mobile.

2. Digerati – this is less than 1% of the consumer target market but it is the always online savvy tech people

3. Pioneer Youth – a vital segment for Taptu. They set trends.

4. Careerist – The white collar market where the employer usually pays for the mobile phone. They have an online outlook and use mobile for voice primarily and are the opposite of the Pioneer Youth segment.

By tapping into the Unwired Social and Pioneer Youth market – Taptu can become a disruptive mobile search force.
 
Stop:

I know that reading this through again now – it sounds as though the above was just a one way monologue. But it wasn’t, I questioned Steve constantly about all of these consumer segments. But all I got was a convincing argument followed by a great Jeans comparison. 

Levis (the jeans that built America) were dominant but it hasn’t meant that successfully crafted brands such as Diesel haven’t managed to get or gain a considerable market share as well. Looking at it like that – I think that the viral effect could work for Taptu.

Branding is essential and focusing on winning the right segments should result in a very positive outlook for Taptu.
If you ask me if Taptu will displace Google the answer is no. But if you ask me could it become a brand that disrupts the mobile search environment offering universal search to the socially connected?

The answer would be very very different.