Mobile Developers Share Small-Biz Insights

It's no great secret that there's a digital growth opportunity coming from the mobile user armed with smartphones.

At MarketPlaces 2010 The Local Vertical Opportunity, players in the field presented their views in a rapid-fire session on targeting that shifting consumer using a variety of weapons:

• Mobile location mapping service Loopt has 3 million users, supports 130 mobile phones, resulting in them spending an aggregate for 2 million minutes a day on their ap.  Users don't seem to care about privacy, according to Sam Altman, Loopt cofounder and CEO, especially if they're offered an incentive. For example, a Jack in the Box in San Francisco had tremendous response to a smart phone-generated offer of a free medium curly fries.

• Eric Singley, mobile product manager for Yelp, says the online review generator  is benefiting greatly from the increase visibility of its "monocle" "app." The "augmented reality" application provides mobile users equipped with a GPS enabled phone a rundown in real time of businesses in the area.  A check in feature via Yelp's mobile interfact allows users to share their location with friends.

• David Sturtz, cofounder and CEO of RepairPal, reported that a surprising number of service professionals are using their mobile application. The site began as a way to help consumers resolve what is traditionally a "grudge purchase," how to find someone to fix a balky automobile. Aimed at consumers who wanted to test whether the repairs were necessary and fairly priced, Sturtz says he was surprised to learn that automotive repair pros also downloaded the app as a means to demonstrate the credibility of their recommended repairs to prospective customers.

• Craig Hagoplan, president, of V-Enable announced a rebranding effort. Now known as LocalAdXchange, spoke of a highly fragmented, yet potentially profitable marketplace. The advantage of the Web-enabled phone is that advertisers can monitor clicks or telephone calls through the life of the transaction.

• Steve Larsen, CEO of CallSpark, produced an interesting factoid from his business that helps make it easier to make actual calls from their smart phones.  A ad-generated telephone call is worth $600 to a personal injury lawyer.  "A local business owner cares about one thing, getting people into  their store," he said. "Things that make that difficult for them are not going to work. They want to know was their ad seen, the response received and how much it cost to get that response."

• Alec Andronikov, CEO MoVoxx, location-based mobile ad platform, spoke of a  "fragmented and challenging" mobile space.  "It's expensive to change behavior," he said. "Think about how much it would cost to pay someone to use Yahoo versus Google."

• David Chang, product VP with WHERE, Inc., says small business owners are finding the mobile ad space intimidating. The fragmented nature of the industry makes it tough for them to grasp the own roles and the true cost. But properly trained and knowledgeable consultants can presents them with great opportunities to increase their investment return using even "small levers," he said.