DJ Your Own News and Create the Perfect Mix with My Taptu Version 1.3.1 Now Available for iPhone and iPod Touch

Latest update lets customers curate and create their own content mixes from thousands of news sources, blogs, and sites

CAMBRIDGE, UK and DENVER, Colorado — 10 March 2011 — Taptu, the social media and mobile technology company, is announcing a significant update to the iPhone version of My Taptu, its social news reader that puts all of a customer’s interests in one place – from their social network streams to their favorite web sites, content sources, and blogs all in one indispensable app.

With My Taptu 1.3.1, available today for the iPhone, customers can now mix their own streams and instantly become content curators. They can build a stream from scratch, selecting and merging feeds together from My Taptu’s StreamStore, Bing RSS search, and their Google Reader accounts. Or, they can edit the app’s curated topic streams by removing and adding the sources they want featured. Once the stream has been created, they can watch stories flow in from their favorite sources all in one stream.

Mitch Lazar, CEO of Taptu said:

“The ability to DJ your news and create your own mixed stream is the ultimate way to personalize your news and social media experience. Our customers have been telling us they are craving more control over the streams and we’re delivering that today. It takes My Taptu from a passive experience to a highly personalized and engaging one. Our StreamStore is loaded with thousands of feeds from blogs, magazines, newspapers, and even Twitter gurus, so we are confident there’s something for everyone.”

Do More With Twitter and Facebook Without Leaving the App

Taptu has also added more ways to interact with social streams without having to jump out of the app.

• Twitter Stream: Customers can reply and retweet inside their Twitter stream without having to leave the app.
• Facebook Stream: Customers can now add their Facebook stream with only the links that their friends share.

StreamStore Streamlined To Enhance Content Discovery and Quick Access To RSS News Feeds

Taptu has made discovering new content streams and RSS feeds even easier.

• StreamStore Streamlined: Each time a customer visits the SteamStore, My Taptu remembers which streams they’ve added. The next time they visit, the StreamStore replenishes itself and displays new streams for them to choose from.
• Google Reader Front and Center: Google Reader is now front and center in the StreamStore to let customers import the RSS news feeds they already follow.

With these new features My Taptu is transforming the way people discover and personalize their content, giving them one of the most powerful ways in which people can follow and share everything they’re into – from their widest interests to their most niche passions – all in one convenient little app.

About Taptu:

Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England and Denver, Colorado. We build innovative platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices. Our other product, Wapedia, is also available for download at the Apple App Store and Android Market.

See www.taptu.com for more information.

Press Contact:

Bob Patterson

VSCpr for Taptu

[email protected]

415-302-9806

New Social News Aggregator App Available for iPhone and Android Devices

CAMBRIDGE, UK and DENVER, Colorado – 9 November 2010 – Taptu, the social media and technology company, is announcing the release of My Taptu, its new social news aggregator available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices.

Aimed directly at solving the problem of information overload (or what’s been called “filter failure”), My Taptu gives you instant access to the latest buzz on all the stuff you’re into: your friends, your news, your sports, your music and your places. The app draws on Taptu’s mobile search heritage to deliver highly personalized ‘streams’ in a simple, visual and elegant format. Now you can view streams at-a-glance and then dive in when you want to see more without hopping between apps.

Mitch Lazar, CEO of Taptu, says, “MyTaptu is a clever yet simple social news aggregator that we believe our customers will return to many times a day. We set out to give our customers the one-stop-app for the latest news and views from all the best sources, including their own friends and family, and that’s exactly what we’ve achieved.”

Streams are available in four different ways and can be added easily:

• Single Streams: Get your favorite content publishers or sources by adding their specific streams.
• Mixed Topic Streams: Curated by the Taptu editorial team and mixed for relevance and freshness by our search technology and advanced algorithms, mixed streams give you the latest content from a variety of sources on a certain topic. Mixed streams not only place stories into a wider context, they may help you discover content or a new source you may never have known existed.
• Beyond RSS: Using Taptu technology, My Taptu converts content from some of the best web sites that do not have a RSS feed or a mobile presence and converts them into visual streams.
• Social Streams: My Taptu doesn’t make you pick between the news sources you love and the news stories that your social circle tweets or shares with you. It integrates Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, allowing you to keep up to date with your friends as well as previewing the articles that they tweet or share with you. You can even add the Twitter stream of your favorite musician, celebrity or politician and follow them right inside My Taptu.

Our StreamStore is ‘the’ place to find all of the best streams. You can add streams by clicking on trending topics, through our topics directory, and by searching for them. You can also recommend, manage and share the streams with My Taptu.

My Taptu is a free app and available today in the Apple App Store and Android Marketplace.

Lazar Evolving Company Beyond Mobile Search

Cambridge, UK and Denver, Colorado – 20 October 2010 – Taptu, the mobile search and discovery firm, is announcing today that it has named Mitch Lazar, current President and Chief Operating Officer, as Chief Executive Officer.

Lazar has over two decades of experience in the media industry and has spent over 10 years building mobile businesses for some of the world’s largest media companies. Most recently, he was Managing Director of Yahoo! Mobile Europe, where he launched the company’s mobile search and mobile ad display businesses by forging the company’s first-ever deals in the region. Lazar also pioneered CNN and Cartoon Network Mobile and launched Turner’s mobile operations in 1997.

Lazar says: “Taptu is a social and media technology company that is at an important stage in its development. We are evolving our business in a significant way beyond mobile search and I am excited to lead Taptu into its next phase of growth. Our teams are busy at work on an innovative new product that will put Taptu at the center of your mobile experience.”

Geoff Unwin, Chairman, says: “The board is delighted to appoint Mitch Lazar as CEO. Mitch is a well-known mobile industry veteran who has clearly demonstrated his strong ability to operate the company in a very short period of time and provide valuable leadership to the team. His depth of knowledge of the technology as well as the business of mobile search gained over an impressive tenure at some of the world’s largest media companies brings a unique opportunity to Taptu.”

Olivier Sichel, board member, says: “Steve Ives has been instrumental to Taptu. As a successful long-time entrepreneur, he saw the opportunity four years ago for new mobile services with much better user interfaces that would help mobile users discover and find relevant content on the emerging mobile web. Steve will continue to play a key role for the company going forward as its Founder and President.”

Steve Ives, Founder and President says: “I am proud of what the Taptu team has achieved to date. Our award-winning mobile search app, Taptu Touch Search, has climbed to a four-star user ranking in Apple’s App Store, and our latest Android version has been well received. We are embarking on a new phase for the company that I believe is the best way forward for Taptu. I look forward to my new role as Founder and President and in supporting Mitch as we continue our work in delivering innovative new mobile applications.”

About Mitch Lazar

Mitch Lazar has over twenty years of experience in the media industry where he has built mobile businesses for some of the world’s largest media brands. Prior to Taptu, he was MD of Yahoo! Mobile Europe where he managed its mobile business and operations in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Before joining Yahoo! in 2005, he spent 12 years at Time Warner, where he drove AOL’s and Turner Broadcasting’s wireless strategy and mobile distribution efforts worldwide. In the role, he partnered with hundreds of mobile operators globally to launch CNN and Cartoon Network mobile services. Lazar was an early pioneer in digital media and one of the founders of CNN.com in 1995. He began his career as a broadcast journalist, working in the US and South Korea.

About Steve Ives

Steve Ives founded Taptu in 2006 and has served as its CEO for four years. Previously he was founder and CEO of Trigenix, a Cambridge-based mobile software company that Qualcomm acquired in 2004. Ives graduated in Biochemistry from Cambridge University, holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.  He also serves as non-executive Chairman and director of Teamstudio Inc., the Boston, US-based software tools

Cambridge, UK – June 15, 2010 – Taptu, the mobile search engine that indexes the Mobile Touch Web today announced it is opening a US office in Denver, Colorado, to drive business development, marketing and product management locally – a move prompted by Taptu’s rapidly-growing American audience. Former Yahoo Mobile European MD, Mitch Lazar, who joined the Taptu Board as a Non-Executive Director in March 2010, will head-up the new office as he steps into the role of President and Chief Operating Officer at Taptu.

Taptu Inc. will be located in the Denver Technology Centre (DTC) – one of Colorado’s major technological hubs, while its R&D will remain at the company’s UK headquarters in Cambridge. Lazar will be primarily based in Denver.

Lazar said: “I am excited to be leading the effort to build Taptu’s presence in the United States. Taptu is at a pivotal juncture as our audience continues to grow and the product continues to evolve. We recognize that establishing our formal presence Stateside is a critical step in the next phase of our company’s development and Denver is an ideal place for Taptu with its technology hub and convenient access to both the East and West coasts.”

Taptu CEO Steve Ives said: “It’s fantastic to have Mitch move from Non-Executive to President and COO. With Mitch joining and the opening up of Taptu Inc. this represents another milestone for Taptu. The US is one of the largest markets for Taptu and we already have a footprint in the market. A dedicated team on the ground will help us consolidate our position and take it to a new level.

About Mitch Lazar

Mitch has more than two decades’ experience in the media industry and has spent over 10 years building mobile businesses for some of the world’s largest media companies. Most recently, he was MD of Yahoo! Mobile in Europe, overseeing Yahoo’s mobile business and operations in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Before joining Yahoo! in 2005, he spent 12 years at Time Warner where he drove AOL’s and Turner Broadcasting’s wireless strategy and mobile distribution efforts worldwide. In the role, he partnered with hundreds of mobile operators worldwide to launch CNN and Cartoon Network mobile services. Mitch was an early pioneer in digital media and one of the founders of CNN.com in 1995. He began his career as a broadcast journalist, working in the US and South Korea.

Cambridge, UK – May 26th 2010 How are touch device users supposed to find the hottest content on the Mobile Touch Web? To help people discover the latest and most exciting content, Taptu has added a directory feature to its popular Touch Web Search Engine, making it the world’s first and largest directory of mobile Touch-Friendly Sites and Web Apps, the company announced today. Consumers now have two new features they can use to search for touch-friendly content and browse sites to discover what’s new.

Browse by Category

By tapping “Categories” on the home screen, users are presented with 19 primary categories such as Sport, News, Celebrities & Gossip. Users can then navigate to over 137 sub-categories. From puzzle games, to tracking your financial portfolio, to public transportation schedules – whatever your need, hobby or passion you can now find it on the Mobile Touch Web.

Featured Content

Just like in the app stores, you can also browse “Featured” content and services. The Featured section on Taptu is a dynamic showcase of the very best and most interesting content according to user popularity and zeitgeist.

These latest features are immediately accessible for all touch-screen devices by visiting Taptu.com (or via Taptu’s iPhone and Android Apps)

Why do we need a directory?

While the Apple® App Store is well established, other platform stores are seriously lagging behind or non-existent, yet touch-screen phone sales are taking off. Gartner recently forecasted touch-screen shipments will reach 360 million in 2010.

A growing number of those phones are mass-market devices. Indeed, Taptu has seen in the last six months an increasing amount of its traffic coming from the more affordable touch screen phones. Of the top five traffic-generating phones for Taptu in the last six months, three are mass-market devices, including:

Samsung R860 Caliber
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
Samsung SCH-R810 Finesse
The Touch Friendly Web is made for these devices, providing fast, finger-friendly content for these owners. As Admob’s CEO, Omar Hamoui described earlier this year, the mobile web is in its “Yahoo phase”. With all the emerging content, a directory is the easiest way to discover content.

Steve Ives, Taptu CEO, said: “App stores may be getting all the press, however there is a plethora of content available for touch devices that is just waiting to be discovered. Touch devices are now flooding the market from a variety of manufactures in a wide array of price points. In some many cases, these devices have no app stores and these devices need a directory of what’s new and hot. These new features help users find the very best and brightest on the Touch Web – made for their device”

Taptu & The Mobile Touch Web

Since early 2009 Taptu has pioneered the index and crawling of media specifically designed for touch-screen mobile devices. At the end of 2009, Taptu saw the Mobile Touch Web consisted of 326,000 websites that featured content for the new class of devices that utilize touch interfaces. In their April report, Taptu showed that the ecosystem of Mobile Touch content has grown to over 440,000 sites and Web Apps. This represents a 232% annual growth pattern and vastly outpaces the growth of the popular iTunes® App Store.

Cambridge, UK – May 12 2010 Taptu, the search and discovery engine that indexes touch-screen content, reveals in its second quarterly report that the Mobile Touch Web has grown 35 percent since last quarter, which represents a 232 percent annual growth rate. This puts its growth rate ahead of the App Store, currently showing an annual growth of 144 percent, but behind the Android Market growing at an annual rate of 403 percent, albeit from a smaller base.

The report, which covers January 2010-April 2010, also shows Mobile Touch Web sites rose to 440,100 from 326,600 in January. At this current run rate, the report predicts that the Mobile Touch Web will increase to 1.1 million sites by the end of the year, nearly twice Taptu’s original forecast, and nearly a full year ahead of our January prediction, fueled in part by the continued consumer love affair with touch-screen phones, and even more importantly the rising sales of mid-range touch-enabled devices.

Looking more closely at the types of applications and services on the Mobile Touch Web, mCommerce continues to dominate, representing over 22 percent of all touch-enabled sites. In comparison, games dominate the App Store making up 17.7 percent of total apps (MobiClix, April 2010).

Steve Ives, Taptu CEO, said: “The strong growth we observed over this quarter really took us by surprise but with device shipments of touch screen phones forecast by Gartner to reach 360m for 2010 it seems brands and content owners are waking up to this new mass-market medium. It’s also crucial to note that the iPhone represents at most 10 percent of device forecasts. With mass-market touch-screen devices flooding the market, many without app stores, the Mobile Touch Web is meeting this consumer demand.”

Key Findings From Taptu’s Quarterly Report Analyzing the Growth of the Mobile Touch Web:

The number of touch-friendly websites is dramatically higher than just 4 months ago. At the end of 2010, we found 326,600 touch-friendly websites. In April 2010, that number has increased to 440,100 sites. This represents a 35 percent increase in the quarter and an annual growth rate of 232 percent.
App Store numbers are up too, showing a comparative annual growth rate of 144 percent up to 185,000 apps. The largest growth has been in the Android Market, now showing 35,947 apps and an annual growth rate of 403 percent.
The iPhone is a strong platform, but it only accounts for 10 percent of the worldwide market of touch-screen devices. If a company simply employs an iPhone application as their sole mobile strategy, they are only pursuing 10 percent of the market.
mCommerce/ Shopping & Services continue to dominate the Mobile Touch Web, representing over 22 percent of the 440,100 sites compared to the App Store where equivalent services represent fewer than 4 percent.
Virtual Roundtable Looks At the Future of the Mobile Touch Web

The growth of touch content and the rising forecasts for touch-screen phone shipments have far-reaching implications for the industry, from agencies, to user experience (UX) design, to commerce to advertising. To get more insight into these burgeoning issues, Taptu asked leading industry figures for their opinions in a “virtual roundtable”. Please download the slideshow for more insight such as Jason Grigsby’s below.

Grigsby, co-founder of mobile agency Cloud Four says, “The reality is that if mobile is going to live up to its promise, we need a future without gatekeepers. It isn’t hard to conceive of a future where more people have smartphones than have PCs. In some countries, people get more news from their mobile phones than they do from their desktop computers… we need to ensure that we have the freedom to publish what we want without restrictions.”

Supporting Assets

Get the info graphics illustrating the key report findings http://flickr.com/taptu

Download the full report “State of the Mobile Touch Web – April 2010″ http://taptu.com/metrics

Implications of Touch Web for You – Taptu’s Virtual Roundtable http://www.slideshare.net/secret/2UUAJuFclhH3gj

New to the Touch Web? See the Introductory deck http://www.slideshare.net/taptu/

Read Taptu’s blog: http://taptu.com/blog

Cambridge, UK – April 15, 2010 Taptu, the mobile search engine that indexes the Mobile Touch Web, has appointed industry veteran and former Yahoo Mobile managing director Mitch Lazar to its board as a non-executive director.

With over a decade’s-worth of experience in the sector, Lazar brings a deep knowledge of mobile search, distribution partnerships and mobile monetization to the Taptu business. Aside from heading up Yahoo Mobile’s European efforts for the past four-and-a-half years, Lazar launched, ran and commercialized the mobile services and products of some of media’s biggest brands, including Time Warner’s CNN, Cartoon Network and TCM. He also led the international roll out of AOL’s mobile initiatives.

Lazar will work with Taptu to hone and expand the company’s commercial strategy for its two immediate goals: to make it easy for consumers to explore the fast-growing Mobile Touch Web, and to help Touch Web developers reach a larger audience more quickly.

Lazar said: “I am excited to join the Taptu board to help guide the company to commercial success. Taptu’s team truly understands that the biggest opportunities for mobile monetization lie beyond traditional app stores. Taptu’s unique platform and index differentiate the company from the search giants and more importantly, put it at the heart of a tremendous opportunity to grow its advertising revenue stream by taking advantage of this important and revolutionary consumer change in the mobile industry.”

Taptu CEO Steve Ives said: “Mitch’s experience in mobile content and search is going to be of great help to Taptu as we scale up our Touch Web index and take it to a much wider audience. More than 360 million touch screen phones will be sold in 2010 alone and the appetite for new forms of made-for-touch content, including touch web sites and HTML5 web apps is really taking off.”

About Mitch Lazar:

Mitch has more than two decades’ experience in the media industry and has spent over 10 years building mobile businesses for some of the world’s largest media companies. Most recently, he was MD of Yahoo! Mobile in Europe, overseeing Yahoo’s mobile business and operations in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Before joining Yahoo! in 2005, he spent 12 years at Time Warner where he drove AOL’s and Turner Broadcasting’s wireless strategy and mobile distribution efforts worldwide. In the role, he partnered with hundreds of mobile operators worldwide to launch CNN and Cartoon Network mobile services. Mitch was an early pioneer in digital media and one of the founders of CNN.com in 1995. He began his career as a broadcast journalist, working in the US and South Korea.