I don’t normally pluck things from The Wall Street Journal because I assume Local Onliner readers have already seen it. But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s May 8 quote in The WSJ was kind of exciting. He noted: “The leading edge battleground between us and Google in Local search really will come on the phone.”
It isn’t really a two-horse race. A number of other companies are also pushing on mobile search (Yahoo, AOL, Infospace, Local Matters, Local.com and Go2 come to mind). Some of the solutions are frustrating and leave consumers unlikely to try it again for another generation (i.e. six months).
To my surprise, other solutions are working well, and paying off for advertisers. Many advertisers are already receiving a good number of leads. “They’re seeing 2-4 leads in their first weekend,” said one provider. And it isn’t just restricted to“Taxis,” Bail Bondsmen,” “DUI Lawyers” and other urgent, “need-it-now” categories. It is pretty much across the board.
4info.net which was originally funded by Tim Conner from USVP (who founded http://www.spoke.com with me) and DFJ recently had a significant stake taken in it by Gannett. Under Zaw Thet (who is the best intern I ever hired at Spoke and now runs 4info) they are getting alot of traction on SMS search via the phone.
The fact that a phone knows where you are makes mobile search naturally local. We are placing our merchant ads on 4info going forward because of the value we see in thier search base
As part of our bundles for our merchant we are included
Did you see the Ingenio pay per call deal that was announced on May 11th? UpSNAP partners with Ingenio to offer more mobile directory listings. Ingenio provides pay per call listings to AOL, AOL mobile and infospace…now they are going to provide pay per call listings on UpSNAP. I think this reinforces your point.