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Medio and SurfKitchen make one click on device portal mobile search love

by: Bena Roberts Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

SurfKitchen and Medio are joining forces to “demolish the barriers” and create a combined and integrated on device portal.

Who on earth is SurfKitchen?

SurfKitchen is one of the leaders in the mobile on device portal space. They were managed by many ex O2 employees and were the team behind the mega successful O2 Active. My love for SurfKitchen has gone up and down – in the past year – but I think that a new focus on the business at hand (and dinner with one of their investors last week) has made me think that bigger better things are to come.
Um, and Medio?
Well, readers of this blog will know that Medio is one of the top two white label mobile search players in the US and Europe. It runs and manages the white label t-zones search for T-Mobile and also has deployments in the US with significant tier one players.

But when I read the press release I got confused. I wasn’t sure if this was a new business opportunity or simply an extension of the SurfKitchen portfolio? I also didn’t know if this would replace Medio’s own on device portal and what bought these two companies together.

So, I pressed the red Batman button and got hold of Michael Libes Chief Architect of Medio for a quick overview.

Bena: Is this a new business opportunity?
ML:Yes. It’s another channel and a new opportunity. SurfKitchen has a strong on device portal solution and we are now part of it?
Bena: Why SurfKitchen?
ML: Because SurfKitchen have strong visibility and a good solution.
Bena: So its nothing to do with your investors then? (Accel) Don’t you share investors with SurfKitchen?
ML: Yes, we do. Investors do make introductions.
Bena: So is this the start of marriage between you and SurfKitchen, then AdMob, Amobee etc.
ML: We also share investors with Facebook.
Bena: Do you still have a Medio ODP?
ML: Yes. Definitely.
Bena: So what is the main point then?
ML: Our goal is to mobile search one click from the idle screen. We aim to do this any which way we can. We want consumers to press a button and get search. The goal is mobile search in one click.
What we think?
I think next time I am in the UK, I am going to have to get a demo from SurfKitchen.