About This Video
This panel discussion is from the iHollywood Forum Search and Media Conference in Los Angeles.
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As content goes mobile, consumers need ways to parse it. But the dynamics of mobile search will be radically different than its online cousin. Searches will be far more contextual — dependent upon what consumers want to do next. And the issue of spam looms large in a universe where one ad fills a screen.
Web search is very different than mobile search. On the phone, people are looking for answers rather than links.
Challenges for mobile search include form factor of the screen size, device type (WAP, SMS, etc). In the mobile world the operators / carriers and OEMs provide an important part of the value chain. They own the access to the consumers.
Younger users are becoming much more adept at using cell phones for search and the form factors of the phones are becoming more conducive to search. The iPhone is a good example. It has a browser right on the device and replicates the PC experience much better than other phones on the market.
Ease of use has been one of the main challenges to getting broad adoption of new services. Operators are starting to get better at packaging applications in a user-friendly way.
Moderator
James Granelli, Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times
Panelists
Zaw Thet, CEO and Co-Founder, 4INFO
Darcie de Freitas, Product Manager for Live Search for Mobile, Microsoft
Doug Leeds, Vice President of Product Management, Ask.com
Michael Libes, Chief Architect and Co-Founder, Medio
About Search and Media
Search and Media is at the heart of what media is becoming in the 21st century.With an influx of Web content, it is paramount to guide consumers to the topics, news, blogs, music, movies, television, videos and other digital media they desire. Increasingly, “Search†is becoming synonymous with user interface and the gateway to everything from TV content to L.L. Bean catalogs.
Search and Media is the first conference to examine the profound connection between entertainment media and search engines. Held in the heart of Hollywood at the legendary Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, industry leaders meet where capital for the creation, distribution and monetization of media converge.
While Google and Yahoo! define the opposing poles of search – with Google the ultimate search tool and Yahoo! a media company for which search is the driving engine – a multitude of smaller, more specialized search engines are staking their claim within the rapidly evolving digital world.
Search and Media explored searching mobile content, music, video, news, images and hyperlinked reality.
This conference is an extension of what iHollywood Forum does best: create a marketplace between the two opaque cultures of Hollywood and high-tech. If Wired editor Chris Anderson’s famous formulation of “the Long Tail” — consumer demand for increasingly granular content — is to become a reality, media and search will have to develop in tandem.
