Wordnumbers and the electric car: good ideas never die

As we reported in March, a small part of Yahoo's emerging strategy to become the number one mobile search engine was an aggressive foray into the numeric domain name arena. In March, Yahoo struck a partnership deal with WordDial, a New Zealand company that owns hundreds of thousands of numeric domain names including Yahoo's wordnumber, which is 92466.com. (The wordnumber concept is one that never fully took off. The credit for its origin might go to Google, Inc., which owns their .com wordnumber - 466453.com - and actually put it into use back in 2001 when their Google Number Search free service was live for several months. Since 2001, every now and then a blogger resurrects the same old question - 'Why does Google own 466453.com' - and eventually learns anew the basic concept of the wordnumber and some of its practical benefits to the mobile search experience.)

Although Google hasn't profited in any measurable terms by owning 466453.com (466453.com had an Alexa ranking of 4,181,472 in October 2006), which Google simply forwards to its main search page, there still exists a very real possibility that wordnumbers could be winning tickets in the near future. As cell phone manufacturers begin to build in hot-keys (that can be programmed to add '.com' to a URL entry) or even add '.com' buttons to keypads, users will eventually realize that multi-tapping to spell out words on a mobile phone keypad will be a waste of their time and energy.

In March, Yahoo wanted to get in on the action and we suspect paid a premium price to get WordDial to activate 92466.com and resolve it to one of WordDial's premiere portals at 732724.com, which is the .com wordnumber for SEARCH. Back in March, Yahoo was the number one listing at 732724.com. We noticed this week that Yahoo's placement has fallen. It has not only fallen below three distinct Google mobile search links, but also the link to Live Search for Mobile.

The likely explanation for this change is statistics. There couldn't have been more than a thousand or two unique visitors in a one-month period to 92466.com. And when Yahoo execs scoffed at the poor stats, they probably decided it wasn't worth the money to be number one at WordDial's premiere portal. Yahoo hasn't given up; they still are listed on WordDial's SEARCH portal - at number five - and also listed on the nearly 10 other WordDial portals as we mentioned our March 31 post.

So, who's at fault for the lackluster experience of the 'wordnumber.' It is the same old argument: will a concept evolve into a trend because users demand it (i.e., demand an easier way to enter mobile searches) or because providers market the concept. Certainly, none of the three big search companies have done anything to market the idea of the wordnumber. A simple google or blog search will reveal that the only marketing over the past year or two of Yahoo's and Google's .com wordnumber has been us, Jamptap. So, then, why does Yahoo and Google, and other internet companies, bother to retain their partnership agreements with WordDial? Our best guess is that they want to penetrate the New Zealand mobile market and WordDial is one of the best places to do that.

What it all comes down to is marketing. Who wants a brand name - which in the case of Google or Yahoo accounts for hundreds of millions of dollars or more as Goodwill on the balance sheet - to suddenly be synonymous with a string of numbers? It's a daring move to associate a nearly billion dollar asset to a string of un-trademarkable numbers. However, Porsche, Disney and Levi's (jeans), among other companies, have accomplished this association without peril to their profits. The idea probably makes Yahoo and Google execs jittery for the above reason and also the likelihood that users will be easily confused by the association of a brand name like Yahoo to a string of numbers. But that is becoming less and less the case ever since those companies began marketing their SMS codes, 92466 and 466453, respectively. Note that Google's shortcode was 46645 for many years before Google recently changed it to 466453.

As Google and Yahoo plan to roll out a slew of new mobile products over the next few years, it is inevitable that efficiency of the wordnumber concept will prevail. Speaking of efficiency, who knew back in the early 1900s - after the energy-efficient electric car idea was killed - that in 2007 we would all be hyped about electric (or hybrid) vehicles? Good ideas, they never die.