Today, after two years as Taptu’s Community Manager, I’m writing my last post here. It’s a very odd feeling, like getting sudden vertigo after realising that I’ve climbed to the top of a mountain.

I look back at all the things we’ve achieved in that time and am simply amazed at the growth. When I joined, a few engineers were throwing ideas around about a mobile search and we had a pile of mobile phones sitting on a desk, which we used for testing. In October 2007, the first iteration of Taptu went live, and like a very nervous parent, I watched feedback begin to trickle in.

Since then, it’s with great anticipation that we’ve rolled out numerous feature releases, all with very entertaining naming conventions, bought vast amounts of hardware and … also bought vast amounts of beer on evenings out with the fab community we discovered. Working with a startup is head-spinning and heart-pounding, with team meetings putting rollercoasters to shame sometimes. And now, it’s time for me to hand over the reigns to a new (soon to join) Community Manager.

Armed with great experiences and knowledge, I’m by no means disappearing off the map. With many projects in constant evolution, I’ll be flitting around Cambridge and London and, of course, organising some further Cambridge Geek Nights.

And so, on this note, I hang up my hat (which is obviously bright pink and fluffy) and head into the sunset. Thanks everyone and see you around! (By which I mean, on my blog, on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook )

Have a great summer,

- Vero

Earlier this week, we launched our iPhone app with much excitement – it was the culmination of many months of work, so we couldn’t help being curious to see what people thought.

Ewan at Mobile Industry Review says:

“[Ed note: In the context of your average mobile search engine] It’s incredibly annoying to have to click, click, click on a mobile device, irrespective what type. There’s a cost in terms of time and battery (assuming you’re on an unlimited data plan) to every single tap or click.

So they’ve tried really hard to get it right first time. A total godsend for any mobile user. [...] Nice work Taptu!”

Scott at MobileCrunch says:

“Another great feature of the current version of the Taptu app are context sensitive search filters included beneath the default search filters. As you can see, my search for beer produced a number of beer-related links. Mmmmm…beeer.

Bottom line: Taptu is a pretty slick mobile search solution.”

What’s On iPhone says:

“Google works just fine on the iPhone, especially now that iGoogle is back on line. But is it the only choice of search engines for the device? NO WAY!

Taptu brings a unique aproach to web searches on the iPhone with its new search engine. Designed to be finger friendly, it is intended for small screen. And it shows.”

Now, we have also had a few bits of criticism from some iTunes reviewers, who have flagged up that our index isn’t up to scratch for every type of search term. That’s a fair comment – our index is growing every day and will continue to improve as we keep plowing more material into it. In fact, you can help improve our index by recommending the best mobile sites out there if we don’t already list them.

Our thanks go out to everyone who’s taken time to look at the app, reviewed or commented (positively or negatively constructively) over the past few months. Now, how about I go get one of ‘em new 3GS iPhones and test that Taptu works properly on it? Oooh shiny!

Today we are launching the Taptu search app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. For us it’s the culmination of a 6 month effort to create a new kind of search experience that’s optimised for touch devices like the iPhone.

This search experience starts from scratch with a new mobile search index – an index of as many touch-friendly Web pages as our crawlers can find. By touch-friendly we mean not only a Web page that is optimised for mobile but also one which is easy to navigate with your finger without pinching, scrolling or zooming contortions. (We’ve talked in depth about this concept of touch-friendly search in our recent white paper “Exploring the Touch Friendly Web”)

Over the last 12 months we’ve seen an exponential growth in the number of touch–friendly Web sites. They’ve multiplied more than 10-fold (Taptu estimate) as site owners begin to focus more and more on building their mobile audiences. Some are doing this in anticipation of an expected surge of e-commerce activity on mobile phones (the same surge that has already happened in Japan and South Korea). Touch phones with their bigger screens, better browsers and all-you-can-eat data plans are where this wave is going to hit first in Western markets.

It’s hard for users to explore the touch-friendly Web. The well-known search engines take you to desktop site results, sometimes auto-transcoding them for your phone. Start-up players have indexed the older-style mobile sites designed for phones with their smaller screens and their keypads. But until today nobody has offered a search engine especially for the touch-friendly Web.

Our touch-friendly index is still young and growing by leaps and bounds, but it’s now big enough – 3m+ pages – to be really useful. It’s available for you to play with right now. Just download it from the Apple App Store onto any iPhone or iPod touch. We’re keen to get your feedback, so please let us know what you think.  Email iPhone [AT] taptu.com, @taptu on Twitter or use the feedback forums you’ll find in the About section of the App.

And watch out for updates and other new developments from Taptu coming soon.

[the full press release is available here]

Links:

• Try the App now : take me to App Store
• Follow Taptu on Twitter: http://twitter.com/taptu
• Join Taptu’s Facebook group: http://bit.ly/woxVg
• See Video of the Taptu app: http://tinyurl.com/ktkg4p

Always dreamed of being the Community Guy/Gal for a cool startup in its prime? Taptu is looking for a new full-time Community Manager – Could it be you?

We are looking for a Community Manager, based in either London or Cambridge, with a dynamic personality, great communication skills and experience working with the community. You’ll manage all aspects day-to-day community life for Taptu through a wide range of channels, including this blog, Twitter and Facebook. You’ll get to contribute to the development of some fun campaigns and attend some great events.

Below is an official job description, but nothing is ever the same in real life as it is on paper. As I step down from the role after two years as Community Gal, if you think you’ve got it in you, drop me a line on Twitter directly with your questions.

It’s your chance to take the torch and carry it forward, so go on, apply by emailing givemeajob@taptu.com!

NO AGENCIES PLEASE

- Vero

Community Manager role

Objectives of role:

• To increase usage of Taptu across all mobile devices and loyalty of users
• To be an authentic voice of Taptu externally and representative for the community’s needs internally
• Build trust in our brand

Responsibilities include, but not limited to:

• Communicate with our users whenever and wherever appropriate on a personal level through the blog & social networks
• Identify and analyse issues, patterns and trends in community requests & product performance
• Identify ways to improve the speed in which Taptu responds to user feedback
• Be an evangelist for Taptu online and the first point of contact for the community
• Take part in relevant events, such as mobile conferences, BarCamps and impromptu gatherings with fellow bloggers (will often involve alcohol)
• Liaise with UK & US PR agencies, occasionally helping manage Taptu events
• Work closely with our US Community Manager
• Manage a small dedicated User Help team in Cambridge

The successful applicant will need to demonstrate the following skills & experience:

• You love helping people and find it rewarding to solve people’s problems
• Fluent, fast and engaging writer; from authoring long articles to creativity in less than 140 characters
• Understanding of and enthusiasm for social media (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Digg, blogs etc..)
• You probably already have your own blog or an established online presence and have an understanding of blogging in the business context
• Excellent project management skills: experience managing multiple projects simultaneously and working effectively across departments (engineering, operations and commercial)
• Practical knowledge of basic web tools: HTML, image manipulation and video editing
• Some experience of web analytics software such as Google Analytics and Mint would be good
• Existing contacts in the media or mobile would be useful
• Experience working in a start-up environment would be a bonus
• Degree educated

When we first started out on this journey, 10,000 searches on a mobile device felt like climbing Everest but we’re pleased to announce today that we’ve just reached a major traffic milestone. The BIG 1m. Everyday Taptu users across the world tap over 1,000,000 search requests on their mobile phones.

It’s a cheesey cliche but we’d genuinely like to thank all the people who use Taptu regularly and the team at Taptu for working so hard to achieve this.

Now for the next milestone….

The official press/blogger/ release thingy-me-jig is here

If you’re a fan of Taptu’s service and technology, you should meet the guy who drives our innovation and vision.  This may sound like I’m sucking up, but Steve Ives is a true entrepreneur who has some amazing ideas about the future of mobile technology.

That said, Steve will be at a few different events in the month of June where you can meet and greet our head honcho.

Mobile Web Summit 2.0

3-4 June 2009 in London, England

Steve will be speaking at this exciting conference early in June.

Open Mobile Summit

10-11 June 2009 in London, England

Barcelona Mobile 2.0

18-19 June in Barcelona, Spain

Mobile Entertainment Market

23-24 June  in London, England

It’s Spring, a time where flowers bloom and little baby rabbits run around on the grass outside our office. This time of rebirth also brings a fresh new look for Taptu!

We have only just launched a new desktop site and unveiled a new company logo.

As you can see from the desktop site, the iPhone application isn’t yet available for download, but we’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready when you sign up to our (very occasional) newsletter here. We’ll be giving the blog a lick of paint soon too to include the new “squid” logo and some more colour.

We have high hopes for the future and can’t wait to release the app for you to enjoy!

In Cambridge, we recently had our Spring Party.

To celebrate the upcoming release of our iPhone application, we had a fantastic iPod Touch cake.

And in case you were wondering: yes, the cake was as good as it looks!

That is, of course, I was *told* it was really good.  As I’m in the US, I didn’t get to partake in the yummy iPhone baked goods

We’re looking for a Senior IT Technician who can help us build and support our alternative take on mobile search. Our ideal candidate will be a recent graduate with exceptional interpersonal skills and capable of maintaining a positive attitude in the most frustrating of circumstances!

The role will include many responsibilities, but broadly covering:

• First-line support to staff, assisting with laptops and desktops (Windows, Mac and Linux)
• Office IT infrastructure: networking, printers, cabling, desk moves etc
• IT purchasing, returns, stock management etc
• Linux maintenance (installing, patching, troubleshooting)
• Server farm support: installations, repairs, diagnosing problems

Academic Requirements

• good “A” levels demonstrating science and mathematical skills
• a degree in a science or engineering subject OR equivalent industry experience and track record

As a minimum, our ideal candidate will have:

• Good familiarity with linux
• General purpose scripting skills, including bash and perl or python
• Good Mac/Windows support knowledge
• Basic networking knowledge (TCP/IP, DHCP, DNS)
• A good degree
• A misspent youth providing IT support to friends and family
• Several machines at home, only one currently in operation, the rest in various states of disrepair cluttering up every spare drawer, shelf and cupboard
• A subconscious distrust of emacs users (not that we’re opinionated or anything)

The small print:

There will be occasional out-of-hours work to help minimise office disruption, and, when sufficiently trained, the role includes participation in the 24-hour on-call rota. Candidates should be aware the role will include some physical work crawling under desks, cable routing, unpacking and racking (some very beautiful) 19″ servers etc. There will be some travel required when working on the server farms located off-site in various facilities requiring a UK driving licence.

If you are interested, please send your CV and cover letter to givemeajob@taptu.com.

Please NO Agencies – We WILL route you to /dev/null

The Taptu team is growing quickly to support our growth as a business; we now officially have a new team member to our US team. You’ll be reading much more from Jason in the near future, as he covers the perspective of a mobile guy in the American market. Join me in welcoming him to the team! – Vero

I’m Jason and I’m the new US Community Manager for Taptu.  My role will be to help boost Taptu’s profile here in the U.S. and make sure Taptu users’ needs are being met.

I am glad to be a part of the Taptu family.  The company already has a very well established presence in providing a socially connected mobile search experience, and has some amazing technologies that will soon be revealed.  I’m excited to be joining at this juncture in the company’s history.

You’re probably wondering – who is this guy?  Well, put simply, I’m a technologist who constantly likes to tinker and hack.  I’ve been online since 1994 when I got my first Unix shell account and I was hooked instantly with the online world.  My two passions are mobile technology and social media, especially when these two areas collide.

I’ve written about mobile technology on different publications including my own blog – techcraver.com.  Additionally, I’ve been a contributor to GigaOm, WebWorkerDaily, ReadWriteWeb, DownloadSquad, and CMSWire.

I am based in Portland, Oregon – however you should expect to see me at a variety of events and conferences as I’ll be spreading the word about Taptu across the U.S. mobile ecosystem.

Please reach out to me – my email address is jason.harris@taptu.com.  Also, you can find me on Twitter at @harrisja.