Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

At this week's CTIA conference in Las Vegas, Yahoo introduced two new  iPhone search apps.

The release of these new applications and other recent mobile content shows Yahoo’s continued efforts to stay involved in the growing mobile space.

The Yahoo Search iPhone app has integrated search features and services specifically for the iPhone, including "Shake to Clear," which does exactly that.

The other new app, Yahoo Sketch-a-Search, allows you to sketch a boundary around a specific location on a map. The app will then provide local content and information regarding restaurants in the marked boundary.

[via nytimes]

• What Do All These Phone Apps Do? Mostly Marketing | NYTimes.com
  This article compares apps to websites in the early days of the web. Says one expert: “It’s starting to get to this point that if you don’t have an app, it’s a little silly; you are behind the times.” Advertising apps are now evolving from novelties to utilities, but the biggest challenge for apps as ads for now is that they are best suited to niche markets.
• Muzu.tv Launches | WebTVWire
  Music videos are a big part of the online video sector. They’re hugely popular on YouTube, and there’s a new YouTube-backed music video site called Vevo launching soon. But Muzu.tv has beaten Vevo to the punch and launched while our backs were turned.
• The ‘Twitter Feed, Netflix Faves’ Mating Game | Bits Blog/NYTimes.com
  A new online dating service called Gelato is based on the notion that your lifestream could be the way to find love online. Rather than relying on static profiles that people post, Gelato taps into your Facebook, Twitter, Hulu or Netflix accounts to provide a running list of your interests.
• Two New Apps Superimpose Wikipedia Over Your iPhone Camera View of the World | ReadWriteWeb
  Wikitude and Cyclopedia, now in the iTunes store, let you view Wikipedia entries about physical locations you look at through your iPhone camera.
• Avatar toys go augmented-reality, courtesy of Mattel and Total Immersion | CrunchGear
  Mattel's new toys for James Cameron's Avatar movie includes a little card that is scannable via webcam and creates an on-screen augmented reality robot or character. Check out the demos at AvatarItag.com.
• Zattikka Announces Atomico Ventures as Lead Institutional Investor | Press Release
  The new online and smartphone gaming network announced today that Atomico Ventures, founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis of Skype and Joost, participated in its oversubscribed seed round. On September 10th Zattikka announced its first acquisition, the highly regarded flash gaming site, Gimme5games.
• Half of Americans Sleep with Cellphone | Marketing Charts
  More than four in 10 Americans say they “can’t live” without their mobile phone and and nearly half sleep with it nearby, according to a global mobile-phone survey from Synovate, which found that cellphones are increasingly becoming consumers’ “remote controls for life.”
• You Aren’t Alone If You Hate Voicemail; Witness The ‘Rebirth’ Occurring Now | mocoNews
  Voicemails are becoming a dying breed as new technologies transcribe voice to text and email, Twitter and text messages become an easier and more instant way to communicate.
• Women Rule the Social Web | Mashable
  When it comes to sites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, and Bebo, women outnumber men. There’s only one major holdout for men on the social web: social news site Digg, where 64% of users are male.

• Film Set for Mobile Phone Premiere | AdWeek
  Sally Potter's film Rage will premiere on mobile phones when Babelgum offers one episode from the movie per day for seven days via its free mobile application for iPhone and iPod devices, beginning on Sept. 21.
• Metromix.com matches iPhone users with nearby businesses | Mobile Marketer
  This new version of the What's Nearby iPhone app lets users locate nearby entertainment options via GPS, post reviews and photos to Metromix.com and share those submissions via Facebook Connect.
• T-Pain's Autotune iPhone App | TUAW
  T-Pain has a new app that will automatically Auto-tune you into the style of some of the rapper's top songs, with more purchaseable within the app. There's even a "freestyle" mode, complete with a few unreleased background tracks to jam with. Best part is the promo video featuring other artists trying out the app. HOT.
• For Teens, Has Texting Replaced Talking? | WSJ
  Nothing new here, but interesting to here this POV from a mom: "I don’t see texting harming teens’ ability to communicate. My son is as attuned to nonverbal cues as any older members of our family. If anything, I have found him more engaged and easier to communicate with from afar, because he is constantly available via text message and responds with a faithfulness and speed that any mother would find reassuring."
• Economist Replaces Your Newsstand Guy With a Cellphone | Advertising Age
  Extending a program already underway in the UK, The Economist is letting New Yorkers use their cellphones to order overnight home delivery of the new issue at the regular newsstand price.
• How two dads turned the iPhone into a platform for children's books | Los Angeles Times
  Their iStoryTime platform lets you creat children's books for the iPhone that can entertain kids during shopping trips, airplane hops or long car rides to grandmother's house for a holiday weekend.

• Pushing the buttons for social change | The Hindu (via MobileActive)
  A one-day camp, Mobile Tech 4 Social Change, will held in Bangalore this Thursday to exploring the power of mobile technology to advance social change goals. Participating NGOs will discuss problems and different ways to use, deploy, develop and promote mobile technology in health, advocacy, economic development, environment, human rights, and citizen media to name a few areas.
• Mobile Web Use to Triple, says Forrester | Mobile Marketing Magazine
  According to a new Forrester Research forecast, by 2014, nearly 40% of European consumers will be tapping into the web via their mobile phone.
• Nokia Sets Facebook Deal, Launches New Phones | WSJ.com
  Today Nokia showed off new music phones and multimedia services, including a "Lifecasting with Ovi" offering that integrates its phones with social-networking service Facebook.
• Napster Commits iPhone-cide; Opts Out Of Streaming App Competition For Now | mocoNews
  While RealNetworks looks for Apple to approve its Rhapsody iPhone app and newcomer Spotify prepares to launch, the wait for a similar streaming app from Napster is over: there won’t be one. Apparently the Best Buy subscription music service has designed an app that would allow subscriber streaming to the iPhone but won’t submit it for Apple approval “due to the high licensing fees for streaming to a mobile phone."
• Audible adds mobile calls to action to traditional advertising | Mobile Marketer
  Print ads for the audiobook seller include a mobile call to action, asking consumers to text AUDIBLE to short code 35620 to get a bestseller free. The mobile calls to action are present within New York Times and Wall Street Journal print ads, online via banner ads, and on New York City subway trains. We've seen a few similar ads on the subway and have to wonder if that's the best idea, considering there is rarely reception down there.
• New gadgets prod people to remember their meds | The Boston Globe
  A study released this month by the New England Healthcare Institute found that anywhere from a third to a half of all Americans don’t take their meds, or don’t take them at the right time or at the right dosage. To address this, MedMinder has designed an intelligent pill organizer called Maya that reminds patients when each pill needs to be taken.
• GPS Hackers Blaze Own Trails With Crowdsourced Maps | Wired.com
  Roughly half a million people are eschewing proprietary maps information from GPS companies and instead going with crowdsourced versions, all based on data from map hack site OpenStreetMap.
• July 2009 Metrics Report | AdMob Metrics
  Mobile ad network AdMob surveyed over 1,000 of our iPhone, iPod touch and Android users to find our more about their interaction and download behavior with apps. Highlights include:
  • Android and iPhone users download approximately 10 new apps a month, while iPod touch owners download an average of 18/month
  • More than 90% of Android and iPhone OS users browse and search for apps directly on their mobile device instead of their computer
  • Upgrading from the lite version was the top reason given when users were asked what drives them to purchase a paid app
  • iPhone and iPod touch users are twice as likely to purchase paid apps than Android users
  • Users who regularly download paid apps spend approximately $9 on an average of five paid downloads per month
• Yelp Brings First US Augmented Reality App to iPhone Store
  Social review service Yelp has snuck the first Augmented Reality (AR) iPhone app specifically for the US into the iTunes App Store. The "easter egg" feature allows iPhone 3Gs owners to shake their phones three times to turn on a view called "the Monocle," which uses the phone's GPS and compass to display markers for restaurants, bars and other nearby businesses on top of the camera's view.
• Coupons You Don’t Clip, Sent to Your Cellphone | NYTimes.com
  Mobile coupons — usually text messages with discount codes sent to a cellphone — are becoming the blue-light specials for the digital age, promoting last-minute clothing sales, two-for-one entrees and cheap tickets to the theater.

The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report [Hard Knox Life]
New report from Razorfish reiterates what smart marketers know already: Brands need to interact in a credible way with consumers and engage in an ongoing, two-way dialogue.

Twitter Outsources Ad Model Development [BrandWeek]
Built on Twitter: Ad models? Indeed, as the company looks to make money, it's looking for some help. Twitter Sparq will embed advertising in Twitter streams (Think AdWords for Twitter). Meanwhile, Federated Media Publishing has rolled out its third sponsored Twitter aggregation site Cinematweets.

5 New Twitter Games to Make Tweeting Fun [Mashable]
Branded games are a good way to get face time with consumers, but there's the issue of discovery. To solve this, some brands are building games on Twitter, where there is already a large community. Now with push on the iPhone, Twitter is even more mobile friendly and that leaves a lot of opportunity for a location-based real-time mobile twitter game.

iPhone Incoming! [Shanghaiist]
Watch out HiPhone, the real version is coming to China. Unfortunately (like Google) Apple is taking some features out of the device (e.g. Wi-Fi) and will probably change whatever the government asks them to.

Kenya: Stock Exchange Makes Sales via SMS [AfricaNews]
The Nairobi Stock Exchange is launching buy and sell orders through SMS. A simple idea, the innovation allows the market to move even faster and enables stock holders to react to news in a quicker way than phone calls.

Siri: Virtual Personal Assistant Prepares For Debut [ReadWriteWeb]
This new app will take a "person-centric" approach to search by offering conversation-type interactions for finding location-relevant  information. For example, ask  "What is a good movie about to start near my current location?" and the product would deliver a textual and graphical answer

GM’s Chevrolet Breaks Bluetooth Marketing Campaign in Mall [Mobile Marketer]
Deployed in Bangalore, India, the Bluetooth campaign for the Chevrolet Spark generated 11,000 downloads over the weekend.  The success of the campaign is largely attributed to the novelty of that type of promotion and the fact that users spread the info via their peer groups.

Addicts of the Information Age [WSJ]
Can't put your smartphone down? Some may call you rude, the Wall Street Journal call you a "Smartphoniac". This "condition" crosses demographics and goes way beyond bad manners, stemming from “a deeper disconnect anxiety, an irrepressible fear that you will miss something if you put it away." Look for the University of Florida's study on the subject, currently being conducted.

GeoMe Launches World’s First Mood Based Search Engine on Mobile [IntoMobile]
The search engine offers location-based searching with updates for your friends. Available on any Java based phone, users can even indicate their mood (from "Cheap" to "Sexy") for filtering results. The search engine battle continues, will niche dominate mass?

Facebook Debuts 'Fan Box' Tool [CNET News]
The social network is opening up even more with a widget for brands, products, celebrities, or anyone that has a fan page to embed their presence on their own sites.  People can now become fans, get live updates, even browse other fans' pictures without going to Facebook at all.

YAPPA Rolls MagaStore iPhone App [Wireless Watch Japan]
YAPPA and Dentsu have launched an iPhone app for browsing or buying Japanese magazines.  The project is going to be launched on a multitude of mobile platforms, and promises to be huge and probably imitated elsewhere (CondeNast, are you reading this?).

Africa texts Obama Before Visit [BBC News]
Obama is once again using mobile technology to connect with the people, soliciting questions via text prior to his trip to Africa. The best questions will be selected by African journalists and asked to the Prez. Who needs the red phone anymore? Just text the guy.

Google's AdSense for iPhone Trips up Advertisers [Advertising Age]
Fresh from its launch two weeks ago, Google AdSense for iPhone is still facing some issues, mainly that ads look formatted for the desktop and not mobile. This is by design; Google thinks that HTML-enabled smartphones are just like little desktops. However this fails to consider the unique relationship that people have with their phones.

Youth Lifestyle Trends | Youth Marketing Mobile Culture Research [mobileYouth]
A look at how teens in China use their mobile, how entrepreneurship might save unemployed youth, and a general roundup of what is happening to young people everywhere.

Coldwell Banker Uses Billboard to Interact with Mobile Consumers [Mobile Marketer]
A huge billboard display on Times Square lets you text any zipcode to 30241 and see sample prices for homes in that area...on the billboard. The interactive DOOH campaign is a smart idea for the real estate powerhouse, especially since the real estate market's integration into the mobile universe is sill lagging.

Trends in Youth Media [mobileYouth]
New research about teen music consumption, their relationship to TV, and their responsiveness to ads on various mediums.

Two in three Japanese dissatisfied with their mobile carrier [WhatJapanThinks]
New study by Goo research shows that 2/3 of Japanese from all ages, and sexes, are dissatisfied with their carrier. The grudge comes from voice plan rates, data rates, network availability, and lack of choice for phone model.

Boston Debuts Citizen Connect iPhone App [PSFK]
The city of Boston has just released an iPhone app that allows residents to file minor complaints with their mobile device. The app supports picture, and text complaints which are geo-tagged through the iPhone's GPS. After mobilizing the complaint, residents receive a tracking number to follow what the city is doing about it.

Google Maps Will Now Include Property Listings [BusinessInsider]
Available in Australia, Gmaps now offers Aussies the ability to find real estate deals around them. The certainty of the feature being launched in the U.S. is unquestionable. Idea: how about a mobile app that notifies apartment hunters when they are in proximity of a location that meets their criteria.

Raising the Ante on Metrics for Mobile Advertising [Mobile Marketer]
In the constant move to find accurate ways of measuring the effectiveness of advertising, the mobile platform offers detailed metrics that no other medium can. Whether through WAP, or smartphone browsing and applications, mobile metrics offer users' preferences, history and, most importantly, behavior.

Obama On The Go: Clippz Launches Mobile Channel For White House Videos [TechCrunch]
Clippz eliminates the hassle of figuring out if a video will play on your phone.  By entering your phone model, the service offers you a choice of videos that will play on your device. They even launched a dedicated White House channel.

Taco Bell Spices up Marketing Strategy with Mobile [Mobile Marketer]
Taco Bell has just launched a new iPhone application to promote its 79, 89, 99 cents value meal. Users enter their budget, shake their phone, and get a randomized choice from the value meal. Taco Bell says that the mobile medium is perfect for its demographic, and the on-the-go customer.

Watermelon Express [Watermelon]
Crunching for the GRE, LSAT, GMAT, MCAT, or even the SAT? Watermelon Express offers internet, laptop, and mobile applications to help you study wherever you are, whenever you want.