Cashing in on people with FAT FINGERS

In the IVR world we all know what a fat finger is. Just in case you haven’t heard the term before, it works like this: A caller dials a telephone number like 1-800-MYBANK1 to check their balance but they optical amplifier fat finger the number and accidentally dial 1-800-MYBANK2. Instead of checking his balance, the caller is now talking to some guy trying to sell him a timeshare on the Jersey shore.

The term fat finger actually has nothing to do with the size of your index finger, but is basically a typo while using the telephone keypad. Oh I know, it’s probably not politically correct these days to use the term fat finger, so for the remainder of this blog I’ll try to clean it up and use terms such as differently weighted digit and massive dactyl.

Thanks to the geniuses running American Idol, massive dactyl will soon be more popular than bling amongst 13-22 year olds. Here’s why: American Idol decided to increase the number of finalists this year from 12 to 13. American IDOL only owns the sequence 1-866-IDOLS-01 through 1-866-IDOLS-12. Here is the problem: when Johnny calls to vote for his favorite singer (the 13th to appear) he doesn’t get to vote, but he does get to chat with a nice young lady that for a minimal fee of $15.00 per minute will gladly talk to him for the next few hours.

Shame on the telco team at American Idol. Most companies purchase banks of toll free numbers from the carriers and someone at AI should have shelled out the extra $50 bucks for fifty numbers instead of 12.

Shame on the carrier, c’mon you’ve got to know that a ton of people are going to accidentally dial the wrong number. Someone in the chain should have been smart enough to know that having a few extra sequential numbers and the commonly mis-dialed numbers would be a good idea. Given the current economic situation, a lot of parents are going to be very upset at the end of the month when they find out that Johnny’s American Idol vote cost them the mortgage payment.

There is a lot of blame to go around for this monumental oversight but rest assured that some goofball is sitting in his basement watching the calls come in and planning his retirement.

The W4’s of Search

When you think about Search today, most people simply “Google”. However Yahoo is trying hard to catch up and recognizing that the desktop war is over; they are focusing their attention on the mobile platform. Their belief is that Search will become much more of a mobile application in the future and that a good Mobile Search will be much more than just typing in what you are looking for and seeing a list of results.

At the Voice Search conference today, Yahoo presented the idea that Mobile Search involves the four “W’s”: What you want; Where you are; Who you are and When you want it. Yahoo has coined the term W4 to describe this concept to those of us who can’t keep up. Or to be more technical, you are really looking at four data types concurrently when performing a mobile search – Topical, Spatial, Social and Temporal. That being said, I think Google is already well down the path to W4 nirvana and Yahoo may be too late (again). Here’s why.

As an avid Google Maps user I can attest to the fact that my desire to “map” before I embark on a road trip (i.e. on my desktop and then print it out) has now been 100% supplanted by my ability to “Google Map” during the trip. Of course this presents its own set of challenges if I am driving.  Also I do find that Google’s sense of direction competes with my wife’s Garmin on a regular basis, resulting in lively discussions about which (i.e. who) is right. (The Garmin usually wins of course! )

However, Google Maps is a great example of a real product that exhibits W3 and possibly W4-ness. If you think about it, I am combining Topical Data (What is my destination) with Spatial Data (Where do I go to get there). I have recently added Google Latitude to my mapping experience which allows me to see where my wife and kids are at any time, assuming they have their devices on. So that’s Social Data, i.e. “Who”. So there’s W3 already. The only thing left to reach a state of W4-ness is Temporal (When). Is that hard to imagine? I can envisage that soon I will be able to ask Google Maps for “places to eat” and that it will only return those things that I could do at the time I asked them. It will show me lunch spots at lunchtime and diners at breakfast. It may only show me ones that have been recommended by my Social Data base if that’s what I want and perhaps only those that are within walking distance if it has ascertained from my GPS that I am in fact walking.

If you assume that Mobile Search is the brave new world of Search then the W4 concept is very compelling. The trick seems to be the one with the most data will win. Can I see myself “Yahooing” from my mobile device at some point in the future…no, not really.