CHACHA: THE FUTURE OF INFORMATION?

Industry-leading advertising-supported game developers have felt the adverse impact of unscrupulous advertising-supported game developers, and we believe information service providers do--or will--face similar reputation-related issues concerning the quality of information they deliver. There was a tremendous backlash in the US in the 1990s as competitive directory assistance providers entered the market using lower quality listing information, some of whom delivered accurate results only two-thirds of the time. As a result, "telco quality" listings became the standard, and the accuracy of successful directory assistance providers now remains in the 90% range.

We are reminded of a sign we once saw—answers: $ 0.25, right answers: $ 1.00, dumb looks: free.

Issues of accuracy become increasingly important as newspapers--historically, the purveyors of objective information--reduce staff and, in some cases, close altogether.

ChaCha's promise to "provide answers, for free, to any question, anytime, anywhere," is simply more than it is able deliver. Here's a simple example.

We called ChaCha at +1-800-2-ChaCha and asked the automated attendant "how much money has ChaCha raised?" We heard an advertisement for AT&T--one of ChaCha's partners--and received an SMS reply shortly afterwards, that read:

"ChaCha heard ur Q as: 'how much money has Cha Cha raised' Stay tuned!"

Within a minute we received a second message:

"You'll have ur answer b4 u know it! 'The Fray is touring this summer! Would u like to get ur tix before they go on sale in Virginia? Rply VAPRESALE"

Shortly thereafter we received this:

"ChaCha makes money from the companies they advertise for. Thanks for doing the ChaCha! *The Fray Presale! Txt TIXVA"

While we don't expect ChaCha's service to provide any inside or proprietary information, ours was a softball question--we would expect them at least to deliver accurate public information about themselves. This information would include, at a minimum, the fact that ChaCha announced this week that it has secured US$ 12 million in equity financing to expand its local and national advertising sales activities, including a newly opened New York office.

Regarding this announcement, Scott A. Jones, CEO of ChaCha, said “this funding is a tribute to the strength of our service and the continuing rapid growth of the mobile search and advertising market."

ChaCha's announcement did not identify who made this new investment, so it is entirely speculative as to whether previously announced investors have re-upped and whether new investors have come on board. Previously announced investors include Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment firm of Jeff Bezos; Morton Meyerson, former President and Vice Chairman of EDS as well as Chairman and CEO of Perot Systems; Rod Canion, founding CEO of Compaq Computer; and Jack Gill, Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist.

In addition to announcing the new investment, ChaCha announced it is streamlining and restructuring itself to preserve its cash. The company is reducing headcount, overhead, and expenditures through a series of cost-saving actions to ensure the company is positioned for long-term success. VentureWire estimates that the company laid off 25 of its 81 employees. ChaCha reports that it delivers 30 million impressions per month and has had 3.6 million users since their launch in January, 2008. Last year, ChaCha reported having over 35,000 guides who had answered over 30 million queries since their launch.-Stuart Whitaker

BOBAJOB ON TOP OF MOBILE PEER AWARDS

Six Mobile Peer Awards have been won by five organizations. Early stage: Babajob.com won the jury and the community awards, while the audience award was won by Orbster. Emerging stage: the community award was won by Fring, the jury award was won by PopCatcher, and the audience award was won by Unkasoft. -Stuart Whitaker

NOKIA JUMPS INTO CONTENT DELIVERY

Nokia announced that in early May it will begin distributing content in the Ovi Store. The store will consolidate Nokia's current content services, including Download!, MOSH, and WidSets into a single channel. The content will range from application, games, videos, widgets, podcasts, location-based applications, and personalization content for Nokia Series 40 and S60 devices. The Nokia N97, available in June, will be the first device to include the storefront. Nokia plans to offer advanced content targeting and monetization options for content providers and application developers. -Stuart Whitaker

GOOGLE TAKES GREAT LATITUDE

Less than a week after global technology leaders addressed questions about issues including the future of privacy and control, Google delivered its answer. Latitude is Google's new service that allows you to "see where your friends are." Users who wish may have their location automatically plotted on Google Maps. Automatic location is available today on smartphones including Blackberry, some S60 handsets, Windows Mobile devices, and wired computers (with some exceptions). Automatic location is expected on the iPhone "very soon."

While there has been a host of critics who are extremely alarmed about the loss of privacy that Latitude causes, Latitude is an opt-in service from the ground up. Users will not be visible unless they specifically enable the service; users can control who sees their location, the granularity with which their location appears, users can even spoof the service entirely (I'm in Iceland, at the moment), and users can "hide" themselves at any time. Google says that location information will not be made available to advertisers. -Stuart Whitaker

US RECESSION BUILDS.

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis reported "advance" estimates that real GDP declined in the fourth quarter of 2008 at an annual rate of 3.8%, compared to the third quarter. The decrease was attributed to negative contributions from exports, personal consumption expenditures, equipment and software, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by positive contributions from private inventory investment and federal government spending. Real GDP declined in the third quarter by 0.5%. Real GDP for 2008 as a whole increased by 1.3%. -Stuart Whitaker

USAID ANNOUNCES WINNERS IN DEVELOPMENT 2.0 CHALLENGE

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) announced three mobile innovation winners, selected from 115 applicants, in its Development 2.0 Challenge. The objective of the competition was to encourage development of low-cost, high development impact services.

The first place winner was RapidSMS Child Malnutrition Surveillance, a service that enables health practitioners in Malawi to share and track children's nutritional information automatically at the touch of a cell phone button, significantly supporting efforts to enhance children's health and vastly reducing the time necessary to detect famines. Kirsten Bokenkamp, a graduate student at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), represented the group as three of her teammates built the project in Malawi.

ClickDiagnostics, one of two second place finishers, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides a mobile technology-based infrastructure to connect community-based health-workers to remote medical specialists.

Ushahidi, the other second place finisher, is a platform that crowdsources crisis information, allowing anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form. The system was originally developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi's roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. -Stuart Whitaker

MOBILEMONDAY PEER TO PEER LIST AND LINKS

The mobile industry isn't immune the global economic recession, lending is at a virtual standstill, and startup capital seems even more difficult still. Nevertheless, innovation in the mobile market continues.

Mobile startups submitted entries to MobileMonday (MoMo) groups around the world, which narrowed the number of entries in the MobileMonday Mobile Peer Awards down to 42 from 163. Two things become clear to us from reviewing these entries: first is that application development knows no geographical boundaries; second is that all these applications--ranging from mobile social to traffic management to job sites to business card replacements--are global in their appeal.

The current list will be reduced to 20 shortly. Contact us for further details.

COMPANY
7syntax
Addict Digital Media
adplace.com
Aka-Aki
Anaeko
Aradiom
Babajob.com
Beabloo
Big in Japan
bioLocate
CIDWAY
Cirius Technologies, Inc.: unavailable
Crave Mobile: unavailable
Creador Estudio Interactivo C.A.
Dazzboard
Dial2Do
Dialy
Fortumo
Fring
Getjar Networks
iKen Solutions
Keynetik
Mob4Hire
Mobintech A/S
mobiSiteGalore
MocoSpace
Nimbuzz B.V.
Orbster GmbH
Oxynade
Palringo
rmbrME
Secusmart GmbH
SINDYK
Smaato Inc.
SoonR
Tellmewhere
Unkasoft
Wapalta
Wapja.net
WorldMate, Inc.
Xumii


-Stuart Whitaker

KGB HAS THE ANSWER

One of the brightest spots in an otherwise fairly dim looking outlook for 2009 is mobile services. Information service provider kgb, formerly known as INFONXX, has jumped head first into mobile services with a new suite of services designed to deliver information on a 24/7 basis via text, mobile, and Web. -Stuart Whitaker

RUMMBLE LOOKS TO PUT SOCIAL IN LOCATION SEARCH AND DISCOVERY

In deference to the fact that Rummble, out in Beta, tells us upfront that "we know it's not perfect," it only seems fair to cut them some slack, to acknowledge what they have told us, that it is a work in progress. "We've listened to your cries and we're soon launching a new Rummble explorer which is easier to use in every way." Fair enough then, we'll look at it from that perspective.

Rummble says of itself that it "is a location based social search and discovery tool, enabling users to find recommended content for a location more easily, without a traditional keyword search. Instead, Rummble’s algorithm provides personalised results based upon a trust profile it builds for you and the content in your social network." In November, Rummble launched its iPhone application. Mobility is essential for any location-related search service.

We have a couple primary thoughts about the application. The first has to do with the service concept itself. The Rummble strategy seems dependent on developing a database of "Rummbles," locations that your friends may be interested in. The strategy seems to be develop this service without much in the way content partnerships, though Rummble does use Google maps and does offer connectivity to Facebook and Twitter. Regardless, Rummble's utility seems too dependent upon having subscribers who want a lot of location information and subscribers who are willing to post a lot of location information. It seems to us that it is essential that Rummble find partnerships to increase the breadth of its offering and of its utility.

Though we recognize Rummble is in Beta with a promised revision soon, our second thought has to do with execution to date. The iPhone application is simply too complicated. Most of us have come to accept and expect hierarchies as a matter of course, an ordering of information from higher to lower, greater generalization to finer detail, whether in science or organizations or elsewhere, yet Rummble's organization seems just a bit too unclear, too un-hierarchical. In addition, while we tried to utilize the Facebook functionality, we had a number of problems, not the least of which was the fact that we kept getting kicked out.

We look forward to Rummble's response to our cries and the launch of its new version. -Stuart Whitaker

DUBMENOW TAKES CONTACT MANAGEMENT ANOTHER STEP FORWARD

While the Apple iPhone is given credit for being the first device to provide true mobile Internet browsing, the mobile Internet wars are just beginning. Mobile broadband, including mobile broadcast, is on the horizon. In the meantime, there is a great deal of functionality being delivered today through applications on a variety of mobile devices.

A new service, called Dub from DubMeNow, begins as a business card replacement. After installing either the Blackberry or Android application (Windows Mobile and iPhone applications promised soon), users find a number of features designed to replace paper business cards. Users can text or email their contact information to another smart phone, which will load the contact data, including updates, directly into the recipient's mobile address book. Information can be synchronized with Outlook and other CRM applications. Changes made to one’s own record are automatically updated in the applications of one’s contacts. The Dub application is integrated with LinkedIn so that users can invite contacts to connect via LinkedIn. DubMeNow was introduced in public beta in November, 2008. It is competing in the Mobile Monday Peer Awards contest to present at the February GSMA congress in Barcelona.

DubMeNow was founded by CEO Manoj Ramnani, who previously founded technology solutions firm Astegic. The DubMeNow advisory board includes D.P. Venkatesh, founder and CEO of mPortal, Shane Oleson, President of Keymind, Jon Jackson, Mobile Posse CEO, and Kevin Ross, CEO and Founder of Metova. Partners included Google, salesforce.com, Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program, the Greater Washington Board of Trade, Intelligent Office, and The Networking Community (TNC). -Stuart Whitaker