The week of March 25th, Leap2 was honored to be the featured member on Startup America, chosen from among several several thousand members.
Check out the feature here: http://www.s.co/content/todays-featured-member-leap2web-goodbye-search-hello-find
The Leap2 App showed up on billboards in Times Square on Leap Day last week. We may be small, but we are big. 
With the release of Leap2 2.0, we further integrated mobile ‘search’ directly with web ‘browsing’. As a result, we now call Leap2 a ‘Search Browser’ versus a ‘Navigator’.
By taking users directly to the web, Leap2’s Search Browser combines mobile user’s need-to-know-now (or ‘N2KN’) according to Russell Buckley, with the discoverability of: web browsing and mobile search category pivoting.
If search behavior is in fact primarily all about Information Foraging, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_foraging (Pirolli and Card, Xerox PARC, 1995), then Leap2’s integration of search and browsing could be a key element leading to a revolution in mobile search.
As it relates to Information Foraging behaviors, the Leap2 Search Browser provides:
- the Hunter, a mobile need-to-know-now searcher, can directly access the web with Leap2 (i.e. I need phone number to X restaurant, etc.)
- the Gatherer, a mobile researcher, can utilizing Leap2 to immediately browse web information and related categorical information to gather information about a subject. Example gathering behavior on Leap2 would be: what music events are going in down-town San Francisco, what are people tweeting about this event, and what other events are related to this event or venue?
- Finally, because Leap2 directly accesses websites (vs. list of results), Information Scent is brought to the forefront by allowing mobile users in real-time to preview website to decide among other things: is the site optimized for mobile?, is content on the site accessible and navigable?, or do I trust the brand?
But most importantly, all this theoretical stuff aside, over the past few weeks, we’ve repeatedly heard from users- that once they’ve used the new version of Leap2 – they found themselves continuing to come back to Leap2 to search on their phone.
Who knows perhaps this is the result of using a mobile search system more in-tune with their innate foraging behaviors? You decide.
Let us know what you think.
Mike Farmer
Founder, Leap2
Danny Schreiber highlights Leap2′s Android launch and showcases key features of the most recent update in version 2.0. The story also showcases several mobile search veterans who invested in Leap2 as part of the $280K raised in 2011.
For the complete story: http://spne.ws/BPg
Text hyper-linking of the Internet gave us the opportunity to ‘surf’ the web and serendipitously experience information space on the web. Then along came ‘search’, and with an index of the web we were able to navigate a list of results to precisely locate the website we were looking for.
‘Leap’ essentially combines the serendipity of web surfing, with the precision of search, by providing real-time web content browsing with a persistent information navigator.
By combining real-time answer browsing and search navigation, Leap2 Navigator is leading the next major revolution in information retrieval.
Reimagine. Great word. Reimagine education. Reimagine the US economy. Reimagine energy. Reimagine innovation. Reimagine the Internet. Reimagine yourself.
re·i·mag·ine verb \ˌrē-i-ˈma-jən\ — create something anew: to recreate something, or plan to recreate something, in a fundamentally different way.
Forgive me if the ‘reimagine’ meme passed me by in the past few months or so, but this is a profound word considering our state of world. ‘Reimagine’ is top of mind with us at Leap2 because this is THE keyword in the headline on the first article on us from Erica Ogg at GigaOm. Without question, it sums up our approach to Leap2…to fundamentally look at how people in 2011 retrieve information on their mobile device to create something.
Our Tuesday launch went off well, and are very excited about the initial response, but if we are going to get users to actually to ‘reimagine’ a new way of ‘search’ then we need a sustained strategy of product innovation, distribution, marketing, etc. – something you will be seeing and experience over the next few months and years. We hope you will join us on this journey.
Please let us know what you think of version 1.0.
Heads up, a new release is just days away.