MobileBits pushing mobile ad-supported ‘answer engine’

MobileBits Corp. is planning for the release of a intelligent “Q&A” search service for BlackBerrys, iPhones and some Nokia handsets, says Walter Kostiuk, CEO of the Sarasota, Fla.-based company. Mobile wireless is speeding up the decades-old quest for intelligent Web searches—or “answer engines”—that can quickly find the precise information users need. People conducting mobile searches are usually in a hurry and don’t have the time or patience to sift through thousands of results on small screens. So startup companies are trying to develop more viable mobile question and answer services and monetize them by partnering with carriers and other mobile players. AskMeNow, an intelligent Q&A service, was initially successful—while it was free, Kostiuk, said. A former Research In Motion veteran, Kostiuk joined AskMeNow as vice-president of global development in 2005, but left when the company folded in 2008. “When the AskMeNow service was free, we got huge numbers of users,” said Kostiuk. “But when we tried to do billings with Rogers and other carriers, people wouldn’t pay for the service. We tried dropping the charge from $1 to $0.25, but it was still a disincentive.” Now Kostiuk has joined MobileBits to develop a new automated and ad-supported mobile Q&A service for launch later this year. MobileBits has developed a proprietary “answer engine” that uses a natural language interface, Kostiuk said. “Users speak or type their question, and the text is sent to our servers for the disambiguation process. Using linguistic software, we break down the question into its component parts,” he said, pointing to the example of a user searching for a cheap flight or travel accommodation. “We don’t index the entire Web. Instead, we would point our search technology to specific content like hotels.com to extract the information. We plug into 25 different strategic content categories that represent about 80 per cent of the questions asked.” Kostiuk said the accuracy ranges from 75 to 90 per cent, depending on the type of content. MobileBits also offers matched advertising to monetize the service. “A user asking a question about plasma televisions would get an ad for Best Buy and not a dating service. Clicking on relevant ads is what generates revenue for the service,” he said. He added that carriers are looking for ways to capitalize on mobile advertising revenue. “If Bell or Rogers start putting ads on their phones, people will be upset. Ad-supported technologies are more acceptable.” Kostiuk said he hasn’t finalized any partnerships, “but we’re in discussions with virtually all the carriers and device manufacturers.” Whether these new mobile Q&A services will function well is another question. Some industry observers say they’ll believe it when they see it. “The effectiveness of these services can be measured—and their success predicted—by a service level defined as the percentage of consumer queries correctly answered on the first attempt,” said Lawrence Lutton, product manager at SIPtopics, a voice solutions provider in Nashua, N.H. “MobileBits hasn't launched, and AskMeNow folded in 2008, so neither provides much insight into the current market,” added Lutton. But major players like Apple are also eyeing the space. The company recently acquired Siri.com, a startup that uses a voice-driven natural language interface and some semantic Web technology, said Tony Shaw, a Los Angeles-based publisher of Semantic Universe, a website devoted to tracking developments in Q&A services. “Semantic Web technology is about representing information in a way that computers can understand the meaning of the data,” Shaw said. “In the past two years, the amount of data enabled with this technology has grown significantly.” Semantic Web technology is what’s needed to develop truly intelligent search functions, he said. To transform a Web page coded in HTML, new code called Research Description Framework A (RDFA) is inserted. The technology draws on codes embedded in data rather than complex algorithms in the search engine. “The tools are still primitive, and many of these mobile Q&A startups are using proprietary natural language algorithms rather than semantic Web technology,” he said. “It’s a format for representing data that describes its meaning. As more data gets coded with RDFA, we will see search engines drawing on that capability, but these are still early days.” Some pundits have called semantic Web technology a “Google-killer,” but Shaw said this is hyperbole. “It’s true that Google didn’t embrace semantic technology initially, but they later announced their support for RDFA. They’ll engage to the extent they find it advantageous.” Kostiuk agreed. “Google is the leader in the PC legacy world, and we believe Google’s search solutions will be around for a long time. But over the next 24 months, more people will be accessing the Web via wireless devices than all the laptops in the world,” he said. “Our niche is to offer an answer engine, not a search engine. We’re not looking to compete with Google." news@thewirereport.ca

MobileBits pushing mobile ad-supported ‘answer engine’

Broadcast | May 14, 2010

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