The mobile internet start-up "Rummble", a GSMA Global Mobile Innovation Award runner up, used its presentation at Mobile World Congress to claim that search on mobile was broken. Andrew J Scott, serial entrepreneur and Founder of the five person Cambridge based company, said that "…technically, search works perfectly on your mobile, but from a usability perspective it's completely flawed".
The angel funded start-up has built patent pending algorithms which learn what users of their service do an don't like, using clever maths that learn who in your social networks you trust for different types of location based content, thus being able to deliver content for a location you will actually like, rather than being given a list of everything that is nearby, like regular local directories, and instead of relying on the user to trawl through pages of search results.
"Users are even more impatient on their mobile phones than they are online" said Andrew. "..nobody wants to walk outside this conference centre and spend five minutes wading through pages of search results from Google Mobile, or anyone else, on a tiny screen. You just want to know where to go, that is nearby, that you will like, immediately." Andrew went on to explain that to do that you have to know and understand the user to deliver personalised content, which you cant do if you're a search engine because search engines are anonymous.
Rummble has been in closed invite-only beta since September 2007 and is now moving to an open beta phase. As part of their publicity drive and open beta launch at Mobile World Congress, the team dressed up in a giant version of their "Rummble" logo and harassed fellow conference delegates.
"Delegates took over 1000 Rummble cards in the first 15 minutes" said CTO Clive Cox, dressed head to toe in a giant letter M "The concept is simple: find people and places nearby that you'll love .. Its something that everyone would like to be able to do easily on their mobile, but until Rummble there has been no easy way to do it." Clive is a natural language processing expert and ex Cambridge graduate and technical brains behind the algorithm.
With support for established social media sites and with 65,000 beta users already on board, Rummble appears to be off to good start "we've got users from all over the world on multiple social networks including Facebook, Bebo and Twitter; but they can all share their Rummbles with each other, building a digital traveling companion which knows their tastes. With a travel guide, you are stuck to the size of the book you can carry and the tastes of the author who wrote it. With mobile search it's up to you to browse through pages of reviews written by people you don't even know. Rummble is personalized to you - it's like having a limitless guide book which your friends all wrote for you knowing what you will and won't like and you don't have to go searching through search results. Rummble learns what you like and you get different ratings and content to me, for the same location. That's the difference, Rummble learns" said Andrew.
Social networking sites continue to attract millions of users and with mobile phone subscribers worldwide already over 3 billion (double that of internet users) Rummble wants to become the de facto standard for finding personalized location based recommendations, all in the palm of your hand. With a few more crazy publicity stunts at high profile events like Mobile World Congress, they might just manage it.
ABOUT RUMMBLE
Rummble is a location based content discovery tool, with comprehensive online and mobile platform; we help users find recommended content for a location more easily, whether at home or on the move. Rummble is described to users: "Like a travel guide that all your friends and all their friends, write personally for you".
Rummble is global and mobile. Rather than listing to you everything that's nearby, Rummble tells you what's nearby that you'll actually like! If you choose, Rummble can also tell your friends where you are, who's nearby and where you'll be going in the future, so you can plan to hook up. Add best of breed social networking functionality like news feeds, status updates, drag and drop photo gallery & geoblogging; it is one of the best ways to share the good things in your life with your friends.
Rummble is a team of five based in Cambridge, England. Serial entrepreneur Andrew J Scott is Founding CEO, supported by Clive Cox; an expert in Natural Language Processing (Cambridge University MPhil DPhil). Rummble has an experienced management team and board including industry veterans Peter Larsen (Apple, Enpocket) and John Paterson (Zeus, Systems Union) as Chairman. The Rummble platform has seen 3 years development. It has been built from scratch to include functionality which capitalizes specifically on the advantages of mobile technology. Rummble is interested in speaking with media and investment partners.