A mobile tapping contest

Although they are apples and oranges in terms of their niche services, WordDial and DigitURL, two Southern Hemisphere internet companies, may actually be in stiff competition to lure in the average mobile surfer. WordDial, somewhat of a yellow pages or huge Yahoo directory for mobile web destinations, provides a much needed free service: aside from its thousands of themed mobile portals, it gives users quick mobile access to the email and search properties of the search engine giants including Google and Yahoo. And, now, so does DigitURL. Both give users the ability to do this via number-only keypad pressing, a method that rivals any other (method) of mobile web surfing.

At WordDial, the way to access Yahoo or Google mobile search is to enter 732724.com on your cell's browser and click your favorite search engine from the list. To access your email account via your mobile, WordDial's 36245.com page will take you to the most common free email services.

DigitURL, however, gives WordDial a run for its money. DigitURL, accessed via a mobile app or its mobile website (digiturl.com), will get you to pretty much the same destinations with arguably less effort. Whether via the mobile app or opening its site via your 'favorites,' a user can get to Google or Yahoo search by typing in either wordnumber (Google=466453, Yahoo=92466) and clicking options 2, 3 or 4 to choose your mobile page formatting preference, a service that WordDial doesn't provide. Gmail is accessed via its wordnumber 46245 and 924666245 goes to YahooMail. The problem is that DigitURL sends the user to a page that is viewed through Google's mobile optimizer unlike WordDial's links to true mobile urls.

So, who's the winner of the competition thus far? Let's be fair and only count the length of the wordnumbers used by these services to get to destinations. We're not taking into account most of the other tapping required: a user may or may not need to tap out the '.com' in the WordDial urls mentioned above (perhaps you've set a hot key to plug in '.com', or your IPhone has the '.com' button already there) and a user may be accessing DigitURL from its app or a bookmark. Perhaps a penalty on WordDial's side of the court is that it provides a set of results on its themed portals that aren't linked to with accesskeys, which DigitURL does use expertly. To get to Yahoo on 732724.com, the user needs to press the 'down' button several times and click 'go/enter'; that's a big penalty that we're not counting as taps in our 'tapping contest,' but something WordDial might want to rethink.

For search engine access, DigitURL wins by a slight margin (of about 1/2 click, on average). For email, WordDial is ahead, however if DigitURL creates a Short DigitURL of 96245 for YMail then it'd be a tie.

There is a shortcoming, however, with these companies' offerings: both fail to provide the user with the ability to easily access any and all mobile destinations using wordnumbers. WordDial hopes that you'll choose the category of your destination (email, 36245.com; search, 732724.com, etc...) and choose the result on their mobile-friendly listing. However, not every major brand or service is listed, only those that paid for listing (in most cases). DigitURL rivals WordDial in the sense that users don't need to brainstorm which category does a certain website fall under and prompts the user to simply enter the wordnumber. The problem is that its webmaster hasn't flushed out all the major brands and services as Short DigitURLs. True, bookmarking any mobile destination (i.e., bookmark > Gmail.com) would be quicker but the point of these webservices is to provide quick access to (nearly) any and all websites out there on the web. Think of all the web properties you'd like to visit on your mobile. These destinations are potentially (provided a webservice develops this potential) less than 10 taps (on average) away and don't require any tapping out of letters.

Jamptap feels that the 'winner' will be the service that is an one-stop mobile web surfing solution, a website that allows quick 'jumps' to virtually any mobile web property using wordnumbers. Even if we threw Google into the ring, it would probably place third. Any programmer could configure a mobile page with a search box that forwards the query (a wordnumber) to Google search using the operator allnum. This way a user just needs to type in a wordnumber, let's say 924666245 and be sent here http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=allnum%3A924666245&btnG=Search or a Google mobile optimized page with the same result. The user simply needs to click on the top search result. The problem though is that Google's allnum operator is linked to GNS (Google Number Search), which currently uses an outdated lexicon - the wordnumbers for most brands launched after 2000 won't be recognized. Try Obopay for instance.

We're not criticizing any of these above three webservices. They are thriving well so far in their own niches however, at present, we feel they don't address the overarching need of mobile users we outlined above. Apparently, they're all converging on the solution, in their own ways. The question is who will get there first.