Mobile Search chat with Pierre Scokaert ABphone

I had a very interesting chat with ABphone recently. If you don’t know ABphone – you should. The company is a branded mobile search engine which is part of a business in France called OpenSugar. At the moment both units are combined –but they should separate in 2008; with ABphone as a brand in its own right.

ABphone is a mobile branded search engine that is three years old. It was established to build a mobile search engine that is monetised by adverts. But it is also brandished on mobile operators’ portals and has been on Bouygues since November 2007.

So, I wrote about ABphone here and implied that perhaps adult content had fuelled the success of the search company (http://www.gomonews.com/abphone-mobile-search-reaches-half-a-billion-searches/). Pierre Scokaert disagreed at the time and this was one of the first things I addressed with him. I apologised for thinking that adult content was the driver of the companies half a billion mobile searches since launch.

He said, it was not a problem but the brand ABphone was built on a community. Its success was due to word of mouth, blogging and social media. I found this extremely interesting and asked him for some more information.
He said a few very successful French websites and blogs wrote some articles about the mobile search service and uptake has been organic from there.

WOW! This is the dream of many of the young new mobile search engines.

But, I wanted to know more details of how or why the search was good.

1. Was it because the users were finding what they were looking for?
2. Or was the mobile search indexed specifically for youth or target users.

This was interesting. Pierre said, that spiders for ABphone were based on popularity. I have heard this more and more recently and ABphone might have been an early adopter in mobile for this. ABphone spiders want what is read often. What is hot and makes sure that popular topics appear constantly.

This again is proof that it is not the long tail –but the “now” tail that making mobile search a success in mobile. Mobile searches and searching is different from online and eco-system of things mobile and the way users discover is very different.

But then I quickly surfed on to the site as I spoke to him and realised something that I had taken for granted when I first wrote about it. Gulp. The ABphone search is a video and image search primarily.

My mind started racing for new business models for the service and I got quite excited thinking of the possibilities that ABphone could have on the eco-system. Pierre said that some case studies and big announcements were also on the way.

We touched on mobile advertising and revenue but that is under NDA.

So then I got all competitive (I fear it’s a habit from Current Analysis and BKI Media that I just can’t shake).
I asked, “so where do you position yourself with Taptu or Find.mobi, Google Mobile or Yahoo!”.

Pierre said, that Taptu wants to compete with Yahoo! and Google. It’s a long play and they want to be a full mobile search engine. We want to be an entertainment search engine on mobile and have a niche. The mobile web is different to online and we are both an entertainment and a search service. We will provide more and more tools for innovative entertaining search engine discoverability and hot new content.

He concluded, “that is why we are different to competitors and that is our goal”.

Related News:

1. Mobile search turf war: Abphone vs Taptu
2. Abphone mobile search reaches half a billion searches
3. Abphone launches mobile game search with Gameloft
4. Zodigo spins off from Zodiac Interactive for mobile content search engine
5. AOL Top Mobile Search 2007