Google Takes Direct Aim at Siri in New String of Voice Search Enhancements

Internet search giant Google isn’t going to rest until Siri has been silenced – or at least topped by a rival service.

This week, Google announced on its blog that it’s voice-enabled search software is getting an update to better perform against Apple’s Siri voice recognition feature.

Although Google has delivered a speech-enabled Voice Action feature for over two years on Android devices, the level of sophistication hasn’t yet captivated the mobile masses.

But it might now.

Google says the latest round of improvements deliver significant improvements that allow Voice Search to better interpret user questions and intent.

“You just need to tap the microphone icon and ask your question, the same way you’d ask a friend,” Google Search Senior Vice President Amit Singhal says. “For example, ask ‘What movies are playing this weekend?’ and you’ll see your words streamed back to you quickly as you speak. Then Google will show you a list of the latest movies in theaters near you, with schedules and even trailers. It works for everything from celebrity factoids to the height of Kilimanjaro and more. When Google can supply a direct answer to your question, you’ll get a spoken response too.”

In May we launched the Knowledge Graph, our database of more than 500 million real-world people, places and things with 3.5 billion attributes and connections among them. The feedback has been phenomenally positive and we want to extend this feature to people outside the U.S. So starting today, you’ll see Knowledge Graph results across every English-speaking country in the world. If you’re in Australia and search for [chiefs], you’ll get the rugby team—its players, results and history

According to the comments made on the Google Blog, Google CEO Larry Page once described the perfect search engine as understanding exactly what you mean and giving you back exactly what you want.

It looks like Google is poised to deliver exactly that.

Just how big is social media on mobile networks today? So big that one in four Americans now access social network sites via their mobile device on a regular basis.

According to the latest estimates from eMarketers, social networking, aided by the widespread adoption of smartphones in the US, is “quickly making the jump to mobile.”

By the end of this year, nearly 82 million US mobile users will use a social networking site on their phone at least monthly, or more than a quarter of the total US population.

eMarketer says that most of these users – 95.5% in all – will be checking social sites on a smartphone, and smartphone users are about twice as likely as overall mobile phone users to do so this year.

But if you think one in four is a lot, by 2014, eMarketer believes nearly half of the total US mobile population will be mobile social networkers.

To learn more about the fascinating findings of the new eMarketer report, click here.

One of the more significant downsides to a very public, high-profile legal battle is the undesirable exposure of sensitive company details.

This week, as Samsung and Apple resumed their courtroom showdown, new information emerged with regard to Samsung’s smartphone and tablet sales.

Documents filed by lawyers for Samsung – and uncovered by All Things D – show that from June 2010 until June 2012, Samsung sold 21.25 million smartphones ($7.5 billion in revenue).

In the tablet arena, Samsung sold 1.4 million Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices ($644 million in revenue).

So how does that stack up against Apple?

To date, Apple has sold 85 million iPhones ($50 billion in revenue) and another 34 million iPads ($19 billion in revenue.)

To read the full report from All Things D, click here.

This week, Jumptap published the July MobileSTAT report and the findings have been interesting to say the least.

The targeted mobile advertising specialists reported that adding third party data targeting to mobile ad campaigns results in significant uplift in click-through rates (CTR), ROI and other performance metrics.

“In a study comparing Q2 vertical campaigns with third party data against campaigns in the same time period without added third party data,” the report reads, “Jumptap found that mobile campaigns using third party data achieved a double-digit CTR uplift.”

According to Jumptap, advertisers are tuning in to those high success rates with increasing mobile media spending. As of July, greater than 50 percent of Jumptap campaigns included data targeting.

That’s a whopping 500% spike since January of 2012.

“Since Jumptap introduced third party data partnerships into mobile just over a year ago, more and more of our current and new advertisers have leveraged the offerings to drive engagement,” said Paran Johar, Chief Marketing Officer at Jumptap. “Campaigns with third party data targeting see higher click-through rates (CTR) and ROI regardless of advertising category.”

Pinterest was, critics contended, the biggest snob of social media – requiring a country-club style user invitation in order to gain access to the super popular social network startup.

Well, that was then. This is now. Pinterest has officially opened registration to the general public.

“We’re really excited to have the capacity to offer Pinterest to more people and if you’re a Pinner with friends who’ve been waiting on the sidelines, we hope you’ll let them know. Happy pinning to everyone!”

Pinterest reached 10 million unique monthly U.S. visitors last February. Industry estimates, however, indicate that Pinterest has grown 10-fold since then and is now the third most visited social media site in the nation, behind only Facebook and Twitter.

From Forbes:

Experian Hitwise has collated website visitor for last month, and ranks Pinterestas the number 3 social media website, behind Facebook and Twitter, and just ahead of LinkedIn. Here’s the top 6:

1. Facebook: 7 billion

2. Twitter: 182 million

3. Pinterest: 104 million

4. LinkedIn: 86 million

5. Tagged: 72 million

6. Google+: 61 million

On Wednesday evening, Millennial Media reported earnings for the second quarter of 2012.

Shares bounced 23% to $12.50 in after-hours trading in response to the company’s better-than-expected results.

Millennial Media also raised its full-year guidance.

Second-quarter losses, however, grew as a spike in operating expenses ballooned past the mobile advertising giant’s revenue growth.

Based on details provided in the earnings report, Millennial Media now sees full-year revenue of somewhere between $176 million to $179 million, slightly up from its previous projections.

“We delivered strong revenue growth of 76% year over year, along with expanded gross margin performance and improved operating leverage in the second quarter,” stated Paul Palmieri, Co-Founder, President and CEO of Millennial Media.

“We now have over 35,000 enabled apps on our mobile advertising platform, which we believe underscores the compelling value proposition we bring to our developer partners,” he adds. “During the quarter, we also grew our base of advertising clients who rely on us to deliver targeted audiences for high impact campaigns across a broad range of mobile devices.”

To read the company’s earnings summary, click here.

According to the biggest rumor in the social media space today, Apple is said to be in talks to acquire a social network.

For Apple, such a move would be the company’s second attempt to go social.

Ping – the social media service launched and operated by the tech giant – is definitely on the short list of Apple inventions that simply didn’t resonate with the masses.

As a result, sources close to the iPhone maker say that Apple will effectively kill the entire Ping platform in a subsequent iTunes update before 2012 comes to a close.

In its place? Fancy – an upstart social commerce site supported by the co-founders of Twitter and Facebook, Business Insider reported late Wednesday.

The objective: to secure a role for Apple in the growing e-commerce market, putting the 400 million-plus users with credit cards on file with Apple’s iTunes Store to work shopping—with Apple getting a cut of the action.

According to the original report, there is no signed deal and no guarantee that a deal will happen.

But the rumor mill suggests it’s happening. Stay tuned.