I had previously posted about Yahoo's Mobile Marketing options and now ASK has stepped up their mobile search offering. As I found out yesterday and with the formal announcement today, ASK has announced the release of a pretty cool application ASK Mobile GPS . Using what they call "predictive text and automatic suggestions" ASK claims that the new mobile feature will ensure that users get the results they want with the minimal effort (in terms of queries and key strokes).
According to the official ASK Blog, Ask Mobile GPS is the first interactive, GPS-enabled application that not only puts the best of Ask.com, Citysearch and Evite on your phone, but adds GPS to give your phone the kind of power and connectivity you'd expect from your computer. Some of the features of ASK Mobile GPS include:
- Share My Location - where you can share (announce) your location to anyone in your phone's address book
- Directions -my favorite feature where you are given audible driving (or walking) directions in real-time. Looking for the airport, a restaurant or more importantly a hospital in time of need can now be easier with ASK Mobile GPS.
- Citysearch - where you can get reviews of business as well as additional recommendations for the area that you are in.
- Saved Places - where you can save you favorite places for future reference. This feature gives a whole new meaning to the word shortcut.
There are a couple of issues that I have with this service however. For one you must have a GPS-enabled Sprint phone and secondly the cost associated with the complete version being made available for $9.99 per month (billed through your mobile carrier.) Note there is a $2.99 per month version with GPS but without Navigation. ASK does state that they are looking to bring this service to other carriers as well.
So what does this mean for B2B marketers? Well with the option to find top-rated businesses closest to you, and being able to read editorial and user reviews right from your phone, early adopter and savvy marketers are going to want to ensure their businesses can be found on a GPS-aware service. Keep in mind relevancy is key. If you are looking for the best pizza place in a certain area of Chicago, you want to be sure that the best pizza place shows up in ASK Mobile GPS.
Kudos to the mobile team at ASK as they are the first to come out with this innovative GPS mobile service. Others will be sure to follow, but ASK was there first.
Other ASK mobile search tools are available at http://m.ask.com.
Labels: ASK Mobile GPS
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