Taptu

Taptu is a social media and technology company that builds platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalised creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices, and most significantly on touch screen mobile devices, including phones running the operating systems iOS (iPhone) and Android. Taptu is a privately held company that was founded in Cambridge in 2007 and is backed by funding from Venture Capitalists including DFJ Esprit and Sofinnova. The company is based in Cambridge and Denver, Colorado.

In September 2012, Taptu was acquired by UK based Mediafed Ltd.

Products

Original product

Taptu's first product was a mobile search engine, provided as a website using html optimized for phones, and dedicated apps for iPhone and Android. It was closed in early 2011, with an announcement from Mitch Lazar stating the intention to focus on the news aggregation product.

Current products

Taptu currently has two products.

My Taptu

Its flagship product is the recently launched My Taptu, a social news aggregator that draws heavily on the company’s mobile search heritage but attempts to move them beyond search.^[1] According to Taptu, the app, which is available on the iPhone and Android devices, is "aimed at solving information overload," or what Taptu calls "app hopping."^[2] It presents all the information that a person "is into" in a "one- stop app" through "streams," or what CNET describes as “content playlists.”^[3] My Taptu has tried to separate itself in the increasingly crowded social news space by offering various ways of personalizing and building My Taptu.

Currently, the app lets users add content through:

1) Social Streams: Users can add their Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn feeds to My Taptu. They can also add the feeds of select newsmakers or publishers that My Taptu has curated. Any time someone in a user's social circle shares a link with him, My Taptu will display a preview of the article and its source in the app itself.

2) Single Streams: One stream of content comes from one source, and runs all of the news or content coming only from that source. For example, a person can add The New York Times breaking news as a stream.

3) Mixed Streams: Combined streams are curated by topic. Content comes from a variety of sources. For example, the technology news stream could contain news flowing from TechCrunch, The New York Times Bits Blog, Read Write Web, Engadget, Gizmodo, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Taptu believes mixed streams put a story into a wider context, and help people discover content they might have not originally sought out.

4) Web Watcher Streams: Taptu has technology that it calls the “web watcher”, which allows it to watch websites that have no RSS feed and no mobile presence and turn their content into streams. The company uses it to fill out their fashion streams.

My Taptu was released in the App Store and the Android Market on November 9th, 2010. It has received several positive reviews.^[4][5][6] and Apple promoted the App on its UK App Store front page by selecting it as a feature App of the Week shortly after My Taptu launched.

To support the launch of My Taptu, the company commissioned a series of online videos. The videos are designed to illustrate that My Taptu had a wide enough depth and breadth of content to appeal to any niche interest or passion a person has. One of its successful videos depicts the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, riding a “Boris Bike” Danny MacAskill-style at a local London skate park.^[7]

Wapedia

Wapedia, Taptu’s other product, is a mobile Wikipedia service.

Management

Mitch Lazar, former MD of Yahoo Mobile Europe, is CEO of Taptu. He stepped into the role on 20 October 2010, after spending 3 months as President and COO. Steve Ives, founder and former CEO, moved over to president where he remained until early 2011^[8][9]

Funding

Taptu is backed by Sofinnova and DFJ Esprit, which bought out 3i’s investments in 2009.

Recognition and Awards

• Overall Mobile Search Company of the Year, Mobile Search Awards, September 2008^[10]
• Best Search Provider 2008, Mobile Entertainment Awards^[11][12]
• Commercial Category, MEX Design Competition^[13]
• Red Herring Top 100 European Tech Startups, April 2008^[14]
• Global Community Award, MobileMonday Peer Awards, February 2008^[15]
• Meffys 2010, Winner of Content Discovery and Personalisation Award^[16]
• TechCrunch Europas 2010, Highly Commended in the category of Best Mobile Start Up^[17]

References

External links

• Official website
• Taptu blog
• 3i investors portfolio: Taptu
• Sky News Technofile: The Google Years: The Future of Online Search Engines
• Mobile Search Company Taptu aims high
• WapReview, Taptu
• PodTech.net, Demo of how Taptu is way better than Google for mobiles by Robert Scoble