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Yulop Launches Mobile WAP Site - How is Local Search and Location Mapping Shaping up in India?
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Vertical local commerce site Yulop has launched its Mobile WAP site. The Local search site offers a combination of 4 services for mobile users in the city of Bangalore, them being:
· City Find - Local search
· Bus Routes - Bus routes information
· City Movies - Movie Timings search
· City Events - Event search
Quite an interesting move. This really takes the meaning of being vertical via mobile to a different level. Interestingly, AskLaila also launched a Mobile App some time back. They have an SMS based service as well (and I think that’s where they have an upper hand over Yulop). Its quite interesting to look at both the mobile apps in terms of interface.
The Yulop app asks you to choose a category while the AskLaila app asks you to choose a city (can’t there be a way to pick up the city via the operator just the way your city can be picked up via an IP Address on broadband).
The search gateway is exactly the same. What follows is also similar.
What I find interesting in the Yulop app is that with my specific listing it also gives me a geo – coded graphical representation on Google Maps. As of now it gives distances from important locations in the city. Yulop claims to have the ‘poor mans GPS’ – so hopefully soon users may get distances from their current location as well.
The compilation of 150, 000 geo coded listings is a result of sheer hard work. One wonders how this will be replicated across India. Will one single company do it? Will it be user submitted and then reviewed by a filter? The last option seems the best way to go.
AskLaila gives the information but nothing beyond that. However I like the fact that I can SMS the listing to anyone I want. A similar feature exists on Yahoo! Local.
All this is well and good. The challenge for a player like Yulop is – how do we scale this vertical knowledge horizontally before being eaten by a big player who replicates the knowledge elsewhere?
The Yulop UI is great. It may be replicated. Reliance has just acquired Whrrl – a US Based Social Network. It allows a user to update his or her location status through a variety of gateways, mobile included. That ties in perfectly with the launch of Big Maps. Whrrl anyway has local search and discovery capabilities. With Big Maps im assuming they already will have geo coded locations that can be graphically represented.
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hmm, how imp would scaling up (to other cities) be for revenue streams, whatever those might be (and what would those be is also a question), you think?
meanwhile, on a different level, check this one out - http://www.citysense.com/home.php
Good post - Does product and UI always translate to distribution and Scale. I think the jury is out on that.
TOI for instance is the largest English Daily in the country- is it the best product?
Contrastingly for a site like Google, the product was its prime mover. Would be interesting to see how Yulop does.
Citysense is pretty cool - something that BigMaps aspires to be. I think scaling up to other cities is important primarily because i dont see revenues that are large enough to support a single city wide network. So there can be location based ads, suggestions built into searches, purchase while searching (for services especially) — Im sure you could add more to this list. Primarily, the lines between content which is useful and ‘advertising’ is dwindling. Advertising is becoming ‘content that is useful’. I see this as a huge problem (or opportunity - but more of a problem) for content aggregation service providers. But then again - this is just speculation. What do you think?
@ Saunik - i think the Yulop product is replicable. Its not Google! However if they can extend that lead beyond Big Maps + Whrrl et al - then they might be worth watching out for. If not then they their product will be replicated by a larger player. TOI is content based product. Thats a lot more subjective. With a technology based product, things can be easily replicated right. Not saying that your example does not apply, just saying that opportunities and threats for Yulop are more extreme.
harshil, i also see it more as a problem.. between mediums, classifieds for newspapers is still a huge source of revenue, on the net its free and ‘useful content’… on the net, many ex- value adds are now commodities, and new services are still struggling to figure out revenue streams… in the meanwhile, tech keeps getting upgraded, the shelf lives of products/services are decreasing, and by the time you crack a revenue model, the technology might have become redundant.. so where does it lead to? …..and i’m really not sure if i am exaggerating
@manuscrypts
I am taking the liberty to comment on this..I am sure Harshil will add on it as well later..
it leads to what Harshil said in his earlier comment.. “Primarily, the lines between content which is useful and ‘advertising’ is dwindling. Advertising is becoming ‘content that is useful’.”
you won’t need to crack a revenue model.. companies will begin using custom solutions made available by the technology and the service will pay for itself for the company in the long run..while keeping the service free..
as an example think of it as a feedburner which only gives google’s updates.. what companies will then focus on is to make their brand indispensable…
In fact I was just talking to Harshil on how this is similar to the post I made today of media becoming a solution provider- http://tinyurl.com/3sp6vn
you guys said it all
ALL THIS FEATURES WERE INCORPORATED BY ONYOMO.COM WAY BACK…. ITS INTEERESTING TO NOTICE IF THEY CAN REALLY DELIVER QUALITY INFO THE WAY ONYOMO DOES.. TAKE A LOOK AT THE SEXY INTERFACE AND FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF