Mobilizedtv

Getfugu: Redefining Mobile Search

Getfugu is a carrier agnostic, platform agnostic mobile search platform, which integrates image recognition, voice recognition, and location recognition into a single customizable application.  The Getfugu platform will be available for 97% of the mobile phones available (over 3.3 billion handsets) worldwide. Getfugu also offers the a mobile hot-spotting commerce platform (more on hotspotting in a Part 2 article).

With vision recognition, Getfugu recognizes logos and products through any mobile phone camera. Consumers simply point their phone at a logo and retrieve content from the brand owner. Voice recognition lets the user speak into the phone to retrieve content. In addition to brand names, the consumer can say generic keywords such as “best pizza” or “ATM.”  For local content, Getfugu is designed to work with the GPS systems of today’s mobile phones. The application will return content, based on the proximity to the user. Local businesses can pay for voice-activated key words to position themselves at the top of the search list. Getfugu also provides advertisers with a way to monetize their marketing efforts through a mobile commerce tool called Hot-Spotting, which enables the consumer to purchase or retrieve information on any item featured in the video simply by touching it on the screen. This function is currently limited to touch-screen phones and selected Blackberry models.

Today, Getfugu announced that a pioneer in Internet search, Ask Jeeves founder David Warthen had been named Chief Technology Officer. MobilizedTV recently had the opportunity to speak with Bernard Stolar, CEO of Getfugu and Rich Jenkins, co-founder and head of business development.

Bernie Stolar

Discoverability is so key in the mobile ecosystem.  What’s Getfugu’s solution?

Rich Jenkins: Getfugu was created around the idea that the handset that is ubiquitous is hard to use. People put billions of dollars into the form design of these phone, and we spend no time to figure out ways for people to access content and surf the web with them.

Bernie Stolar: If you look at Google, the majority of their ads come are local. What we’re looking to do is work with different organizations that will help drive those local advertisers to our platform. They’ll pay a small fee, so if you’re a pizza parlor in San Francisco and you want to be listed on our site you’ll pay $9.99 a month. And if you’re a consumer in San Francisco in the Pacific Heights neighborhood and you want a pizza, that pizza parlor will come up in your search.  We’re working on models with a per-click basis. But right now I want to keep this as simple as possible for retailers and the consumers.

Right now, we’re talking to companies with retail local ad sales capacities throughout the country. They’ll work on a commission basis in selling ads. But the per-month cost is the same to the retailer regardless of the number of clicks the ad gets.

When will you launch Getfugu?

Stolar:  Our target date is to launch before Labor Day. But there’s no fixed date. We need to make sure all our partnerships are in line.

You say that you will you be on 97 percent of all mobile phones? What’s the path to this rather comprehensive percentage?

Jenkins:  Our application is carrier and platform agnostic. It will work on any phone with a camera and a microphone,

Rich Jenkins

and right now, 97 percent of all phones have cameras. The application is different pieces. It has a voice recognition capability, so you can say Nike and get Nike content. It has a visual recognition, so I can point it at a Starbucks logo and get the content from Starbucks. It has a location-based activity, so I can say into my phone “Gap” and get info from the Gap stores. But what’s important is I’ll get access to the stores that are close to me.

Does this require the mobile phones to have GPS?

Jenkins: There is a use of GPS, but there is also triangulation which is another way to fix a location. The thing that’s interesting about the technical model is it’s based on the handset. For instance, on an iPhone where I can do a lot of processing on the handset, that’s what I do because it makes the user experience faster. If I’m on a phone with less processing power, it’s done on the server side. Each device has a signature and when you download the Getfugu application, it downloads the one customized for your phone.

Initially when we launch, we’ll launch on five different platforms and then expand it so we’ll be able to work on every phone with a microphone and a camera. Usage models are clustered around Razrs, and growing popularity of the smart phones. When we launch on Blackbery, we launch on all Blackberrys except those without a camera.

What’s the intersection of discoverability and content creation? In other words, why would a companies providing discoverability create content?

Jenkins: Content for us is, how are people going to use the application? How will they derive value from it? Will they just want discount coupons or do we want to push content to the phone?  Once you have content on the phone, what do you want to do with it? Hotspotting enables the user to click on items within the video while they’re watching it on the phone and actually purchase it. So if I have a paparazzi video of Paris Hilton, I can click on her handbag and drive an e-commerce application. I can touch the jacket and be referred back to a website to order that jacket. It’s an opportunity for content providers to derive revenue from the phone.

Eeach celebrity is a brand. Where does the conversation happen about that brand? It can happen at Starbucks or on the bus, and Getfugu helps bring that content to the user.  Combining celebrity with keywords also gives an interesting play: Where would Brad Pitt shop in this neighborhood? Where would he eat in this neighborhood? We provide a content platform for these content providers to leverage content, to extend their brand.

The thing about our business model is we’re simply a toolset provider. We provide that technology to the content provider and how they use it is up to them, at a $99/month for each logo or keyword that they use in the system.  I can’t tell Kraft how to sell mac & cheese. The Gap logo and the word Gap is $99/month even if 10 million people hit it. If they build a hot-spotted video and people purchase video from the hotspot, we have a small commission charge.

So your business model is based on quantity.

Jenkins: There are 360 million brands worldwide. The idea is to be as broad as we can and bring the barrier down as low as possible.

Who has signed on?

Jenkins: We’re going to wait to make those announcements with our partners. We have signed top corporate brands and they’re building integrated campaigns around that application.

Is content king on mobile? Or is it brand?

Stolar: It depends who you’re speaking to. I can tell you there are people who say content isn’t king. But we’re not dealing with content, we’re dealing with brand. When I sold my last company to Google and I had a conversation with the CEO of the company about taking games and advertising them and giving them away for free, that CEO said, we’re a technology and advertising company, we’re not a content company. In my mind, he was saying that it’s about brand.

Jenkins: It’s a great question. Where we’re at in mobile right now, we’re using this as a communication device with text and voice. We’re just getting into this space. If you look at other content being produced and displayed, it’s an interesting question. We don’t know what the future of the market is. We simply provide the tools to the content owners and help them leverage it.

But what will the end use of the phone will be after voice and text? Will people see this as a way to enjoy content or get access to brand? Maybe it’ll be both.

Tags: advertising, Ask Jeeves, augmented reality, celebrity sites, discoverability, Getfugu, Google, hot-spotting, location-based services, making money on mobile, mobile advertising, mobile commerce, mobile GPS, mobile phone camera, mobile search, per-click basis

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Advertising/Marketing, Content, Home Feature, Monetizing Mobile.