We’re looking for someone to join the Taptu team in Cambridge, as Mobile Internet traffic guru, taking care of PPC campaigns and traffic analysis.
If you can find your way around online advertising systems with your eyes shut, can navigate Excel like a pro and enjoy trying to make sense of web statistics, then have a look at the job spec we’ve just posted and get in touch!
This afternoon, you may have noticed that the Taptu service, as well as the blog, suffered from a short downtime period. We’ve now chased the gremlins out and have resumed normal service!
We’re excited and honoured to have been selected by Red Herring as one of the Top 100 European Tech Startups this year.
Past winners have included some of the most successful and innovative companies out there, such as Google, YouTube, Skype and Netscape, and the Top 100 falls under the theme “Europe 08: Ahead of the Curve”, so it’s great to be included in such hot company!
Following the warm reception we received at Mobile World Congress in February, where we received the Mobile Monday Peer Award’s Community vote in the Emerging Startups category, we’re very grateful for the recognition our users and industry colleagues have given us.
The Red Herring site contains the full list of companies in the Top 100.
Yesterday, we sneaked out the latest version of Taptu when you weren’t looking.
Mainly, we released a new version which caters better to low end phones. Some phones, like Motorola RAZRs and previous generations of Sony Ericssons need smaller, simpler pages, tweaked for their limitations. Every time you access Taptu, we detect what mobile phone you’re using and give you the version of the service that will provide the best experience. What’s the point of sending the high end version to your phone if it’s going to crash your browser?
We’ve also released a metric ton of bug fixes and tiny tweaks to improve the service, some of them based on bug reports you’ve sent in - so thank you all for your useful feedback, your comments never go unheard!
*Shifty look around for the boss* I’m not supposed to be telling you this, but we’ve also released a few extra small features, which are very beta. Shh! You’ll just have to go play around with the service to find those out for yourself… 
Next Monday, we’ll be taking part in Mobile Monday London, sponsoring the evening on the theme of Mobile User Interface.
At the moment, the event is fully booked, but pleading or bribing the organisers with shiny gadgets might just get you in. 
Meanwhile, if you’re already on the list, we’ll see you there!
Thanks to some stellar detective work, we’ve solved the problem with missing images we posted about an hour ago. Everything should be working smoothly with all full-size images appearing, but please let us know if you come across any problems.
Thanks again for your patience!
As of last night, part of our Taptu image search has gone walkabout. You’ll see that thumbnails are all visible, but that when clicking to view the larger version, the image might not show up.
We’ve identified the problem and have our engineers on the case to hunt down the missing images. We hope we can resolve this as quickly as possible, but please bear with us while we print out “Missing: Have you seen this image server?” posters to put up around the neighbourhood and get our pocket change together for the reward (will 2 lollipops and a button do?) to thank you for your patience.
Today, we’re in Austin, Texas. It was an interesting, somewhat snow-laden journey, but now, we’re here for South by Southwest Interactive, the True Spring Break for Geeks. It’s only just getting started, but already, I’ll spare you the Texan hat and rodeo jokes, and I’ll only say that the hospitality of people here is larger than life.
Over the next few days, we hope to meet as many fellow gadgeteers, usability rockstars and design geeks as possible, by attending panels and joining conversations on topics we all love, then sprinkle the lot with a few heated discussions over beers in the evening. (See how much we sacrifice ourselves for you, our users?)
This is, of course, a call to anyone attending SXSW to get in touch so we can meet, but also an invitation to join us on Monday night at Mobile Monday Austin, where we’ll be giving a little Taptu demo, in the company of James Pearce from dotMobi, Brian Fling from Blue Flavor and David Gill from Nielsen Mobile. It’s all happening at Austin City Hall, within spitting distance from the Conference Centre so why not pop by? (RSVP recommended)
Ready for more networking, learning and exchanging of ideas than ever before?
The past few weeks have been extremely busy in the Taptu offices, as we put the final touches to a whole heap of new features. It’s far more than just a lick of paint, as the search engine becomes a search and share engine. What on Earth does that mean, you must wonder?
First, let me dispel a misconception about Taptu. Tons of people during MWC asked me what phone they needed to be able to download the latest version of Taptu. Even after repeating that it’s entirely web-based, requires no installation and can therefore be used on just about any phones, some looked incredulous. At that stage, I promptly (but politely) yanked their own phone out of their hands to show them that Taptu was already on their phone, waiting for them. So there you go. No downloads, ever. Just a simple URL!
Now, back to those new features we’ve cooked up…
We now index far more content than before, in many more categories above and beyond the original music, video, images, wiki range. You’ll find news, sports, blogs, lyrics, travel and many more! Each search result is neatly labelled (a bit like the linen in that overly organised friend’s closet, “single sheets”, “double sheets”…) to help you find what you need faster and without any extraneous clicks.
When you click through to a single result page, rather than throw you out in the cold straight to the destination site, we give you a summary page, big on information but teeny in file size. This means you can decide whether it’s the right destination without waiting for the complete site to load. Quicker and simpler.
Once you find the information you’re looking for in the search results, it’s time to unleash it into the wild. Share what you’ve found to Gmail contacts, email it to anyone or broadcast it to your Twitter stream. When you next check Taptu on your phone, your past shared searches will still be around if you want to view them again.
So try it out and let us know what you think!
We’re now all home after an eventful week at Mobile World Congress, spent meeting new and interesting people who love the mobile web as much as we do, looking out for new phones and services, and eating great Spanish tapas.
Since launching many new features on Monday, we’ve made the news a few times.
TechDigest says “We’ve been getting excited about Taptu for months now, so it’s fantastic to see they won the Global Community Award at the MoMo Peer Awards last night at the Mobile World Congress, rewarding our confidence in this small English start-up to no end.”
Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK agreed that “if the future is social search - as many think it is - then the future must also be mobile social search, since the mobile is such a social device.”
Fritz Nelson from Information Week writes about MWC and the lack of innovation since last year. However, he highlights Taptu as one of the mobile service that have caught his attention. “Taptu, a startup based in the U.K., also has a compelling story — perhaps even more so. It builds not only relevance into its results, it brings those results to within a click of accessing. It presents results based on a ranking of social popularity, provides categories (like blogs, news stories, videos), a nifty little summary of the item, and then a one-click way to share it.”
Susi Weaser from Shiny Shiny, writes “It’s good to see that there are people out there who haven’t just accepted Google as the only option when it comes to internet searches. In particular, Taptu have vowed to take on mobile searching, with their easy peasy service.”
Peggy Ann Salz from MSearchGroove posted an article on the new features we launched at MWC, but also interviewed Steve, our CEO, in a podcast about where he thinks mobile search is heading.
The Dutch Cowboys interviewed Steve at the stand, also capturing a bit of the atmosphere of the conference in their video, and Heise Online congratulated us on the Mobile Monday award we received and are very excited about!
Here’s a translation of the Dutch Cowboys’ text for those who, like me, may be Dutch-impaired (kindly provided by Raimo from Mobile Monday Amsterdam)
“The readers of Dutchcowboys know that Search is one of our favourite things. Moreover web 2.0 and Social media play more and more an important role in things we are involved in. For this reason it is a pleasure to hear an entrepreneur and visionary talk about all this even more so that it is happening on your mobile. Closer it cannot get.
Some will think that this is however the millionth promise that search on a cellphone will make it entirely. While the device manufacturers still struggle with the (business)model around mobile search Taptu might have the correct answer. Listen to the passionate Steve Ives who speaks about his social mobile search application Taptu.”
It's a new search engine for your mobile phone. You can try Taptu on your mobile phone (taptu.mobi), then share your search results with friends via email or Twitter.
Feeling lazy? Enter your mobile number and we'll send an SMS to your phone with the link!
If you're a publisher of mobile content and would like Taptu to index your site, Why not get in touch?
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