eBay outsources its mobile site
Today while working with
admobs (the mobile advertising exchange), I noticed that the link for ebay mobile ads wasn't direct to an ebay URL but to a
third party site. I checked it out and it appears that ebay has outsourced a lot of its mobile sites to a Valley based company known as
Bonfire Media.
Would have thought that company like ebay would have the ability to build their own mobile sites but perhaps it shows how different the tiny screen is in practice.
Aside: Our general (non MNO portal)
tribes site is now generating 250,000 page views a day. This is why we are working with mobile adverting links such as ebay to monetise these eyeballs.
Mobile Search Survey Results
The Global Mobile Marketing Association (for "Global" read "US") has published the
results of a survey of US consumers on mobile search. The results are very interesting albeit with a US bias. In particular the preference for voice search seems to be a uniquely North American feature. Although it certainly needs to be thought about in a European context.
I quote from the press release below:
"Mobile search is in its early stages of adoption, but there is significant upside potential. Thirty-one percent of respondents used mobile search for the first time in the past month. Current users conducted an average of nine searches in the past month.
 Cell phone owners who arenÂt aware of mobile search recognize its benefits after theyÂre introduced to the technology. Half of non-users were interested in trying mobile search over the next few months. Forty-eight percent of non-users expect to start using mobile search at least once per week.
 Approximately 41% of all respondents indicate that sponsored links would not have an impact on their use of mobile search.
 Current mobile search users represent several attractive market segments for advertisers. Respondents with an annual household income of $50,000-$75,000 conduct an average of almost 16 searches per month, the most of any demographic segment. Consumers age 45-54, college grads and people with children at home all reported using search more than 11 times per month.
 Sixty-nine percent of respondents prefer advertisements that are related to local products and services.
 The ability to search by voice was the top-rated feature. Thirty-seven percent of current mobile search users would be Âa lot more likely to use mobile search if voice control were added."
Snap - the other way to search
Check out
Snap an interesting approach to web search which is kinda akin to our
Tribes intelligent search in that you can preview the results in a window pane before deciding to go to the actual page. Glad to see that someone else also believes that the current approach to search and discovery is "broken" as the site includes a
nice critique of Google at al. I don't think the fundamental concept here of previewing within a separate frame could be ported to the tiny screen on a mobile device. Hence our approach of enabling the user to step through the results with the Tribes toolbar seems the better approach for a cellphone.
