Mobile

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Blekko Launches Mobile Apps For iPhone, Android

I’ll expose my bias up front: I’m a fan of Blekko and its audacious project to make search better. Now the site that bought you the “spam clock,” has launched mobile apps for the iPhone and Android. It’s a logical and even necessary step for Blekko, given the strategic importance of mobile. Registered users can […]

Greg Sterling on January 31, 2011 at 6:57 am

I’ll expose my bias up front: I’m a fan of Blekko and its audacious project to make search better. Now the site that bought you the “spam clock,” has launched mobile apps for the iPhone and Android. It’s a logical and even necessary step for Blekko, given the strategic importance of mobile.

Registered users can manage slashtags directly from the app, adding new sites for example. Users can also view “seo info” for sites as they can within Blekko on the web. I only played with it for a short while but quickly came to the conclusion that this is “version 1.”

It’s not clear that Facebook Likes integration exists in these apps, although presumably it does if you’re signed in and have connected your Facebook account to Blekko on the PC. (That’s not an option yet in mobile.). In addition, one of the dominant mobile use cases, local information, seems a particular area of weakness for the Blekko mobile app.

Paradoxically, however, the mobile version of Blekko is somewhat more “approachable” than the PC version and less a power user tool. In some respects slashtags and the personalization that Blekko offers are even better suited to the mobile search use case. Mobile could well be a way that Blekko popularizes itself to a larger audience, beyond the early adopters now using the site on the PC.