CITYSEARCH LAUNCHES IPHONE APPLICATION

Citysearch has launched an application for the iPhone and iPod touch, available via the Apple App Store. It lets users access local editorial content, browse nearby listings, sort by preferences, and write reviews on-the-go. Aided by location-based technology, Citysearch identifies local restaurants, hotels, bars, and shops nearby and allows people to search for business listings or categories by keyword. Users can map the results to find their desired destination. "We set out to build the most convenient and trustworthy local city guide on the iPhone," said Dinesh Moorjani, VP of IAC Mobile. "As consumers grow accustomed to relying on mobile devices to inform urgent decisions and share local, user-generated content, Citysearch on the iPhone and iPod touch empowers users with mobile reviews, featured write-ups on local neighborhood venues, and hyper-local content including user and editorial reviews." -Smarajit Dasgupta

CHACHA SMS SEARCH MARKET SHARE SOARS

ChaCha said it has captured over 28% of standard rate SMS search transactions in the third quarter according to the Q3 Mobile Messaging Report from The Nielsen Company. ChaCha pointed out its 28% share of transactions is up from just 7% in Q2, representing a 300% quarter over quarter gain, driven by a 660% quarter over quarter growth in overall ChaCha transactions. ChaCha reports that they now deliver 30 million impressions per month and have had more than 2.5 million users since the SMS answers service launched in January 2008. "ChaCha's viral growth of a new user every seven seconds is proof that ChaCha's mobile answers service is unmatched – we offer the easiest and most effective mobile search experience in the US," said ChaCha CEO Scott A. Jones. "Our rapid growth, millions of searches and demographic clearly demonstrate to advertisers that we are a major influence on the mobile search market, and have the capability to impact users' buying decisions – which is especially relevant given advertisers' interest in getting as much as possible out of their advertising dollar during these tough economic conditions." -Smarajit Dasgupta

JUMPTAP LAUNCHES ADTAP FOR PUBLISHERS MOBILE MONETIZATION SOLUTION

Mobile search and advertising firm JumpTap has launched ADtap for Publishers – a solution offering mobile publishers, media companies, and iPhone application developers a means to monetize their traffic and streamline sales to brands and agencies. At the core of the solution is the tapLink Platform that builds targeting intelligence from multiple sources including search queries, browsing history, demographic, and location data. “Our focus is to align ourselves with high quality publishers to maintain an inventory that is relevant to users and advertisers," said JumpTap CMO said Paran Johar. “Inventory quality and effective targeting are critical factors necessary to create a positive user experience, where the ad is actually viewed as valuable content. Our technology leverages data from multiple sources to deliver the relevant ads that in turn drive higher effective yields for publishers.” Advertisers in JumpTap’s mobile ad network can run ads across a set of premium mobile channels including different audience segmented packages like entertainment, finance, news, reference, sports, lifestyle, social networking, travel, and games. JumpTap cited M:Metrics data suggesting mobile browsing has been up 89% from last year and page views is up 126%, to note that targeted mobile advertising is now a key strategy for numerous publishers. Of 2.3 billion total available monthly impressions, JumpTap claims its Premium Mobile Ad Network attracts more than 26 million unique users with over 450 million premium page views per month. -Smarajit Dasgupta

TAPTU RELEASES WAPEDIA FOR IPHONE

Taptu, in partnership with Wapedia developer Florian Amrhein, has released the Wapedia mobile wiki iPhone application. Taptu says it focused on making the application as fast as possible by scaling images for the iPhone, showing a table of contents to jump down to a section of the page in a snap and paginating the very long pages to speed up loading. The application is available in English, French, German, Iitalian, and Spanish.

We tested the application and found it works well, our only complaint being that we've become spoiled by voice recognition which, unfortunately, Wapedia doesn't offer. -Stuart Whitaker

XTIFY LAUNCHES PLATFORM TO ASCERTAIN REAL-TIME LOCATION OF MOBILE USERS

Xtify Inc has launched the beta version of its location based platform enabling software developers to ascertain the location of their users independently of the wireless carriers. Developers can program into Xtify's API and incorporate location into their existing website without having to build their own applications. Xtify licenses a client that users can download to their phone. The client extracts the location of the handset and pushes that location to Xtify's servers on a periodic basis. Any website can write to Xtify's API to access the location of their participating users and reflect that location in content displayed to that user. Xtify has the ability to know where users are throughout the day, and whether or not they are surfing the Internet at any given time. Users need to opt-in to each service for Xtify location sharing and can always choose with whom and when their location is shared. "We don't believe it's feasible for every application developer to re-build their websites or mobile websites into downloadable programs that access location," said Andrew Weinreich, Xtify CEO. "We also think that in order for location to be ubiquitous it needs to be offered outside of the wireless carriers." Location based mobile dating company MeetMoi and social network SeeMyWhere have already implemented Xtify technology. -Smarajit Dasgupta