Free-411 Rolls Out Dial Directions Nationally

Jingle Networks’ 800-Free-411 for now is the “free DA” market leader. But it has been joined by a broad range of competitors:

• 1-800-GOOG411 (Google)
• 1-800-Call-411 (MSFT, Tellme powered)
• 1-800-Yellowpages (AT&T)
• 1-800-2ChaCha (”mobile answers”)
• 1-800-The-Info (Verizon)
• 1-800-555-Tell (Tellme)
• 1-800-555-5555 (potentially)

This also doesn’t include the voice-powered (or operator-assisted) mobile applications:

• Yahoo’s oneSearch with Vlingo
• MSFT Live Search with voice
• The Tellme client (a new version launches today for the Blackberry)
• V-Enable’s FreeMobile411

There’s also the mobile Internet itself, which competes with DA in some cases. In the future, mobile social networks may also address some of the queries that might have gone to DA (e.g., category searches). Right now the latter is quite speculative however.

Against that backdrop Jingle needs to continue to develop, market and differentiate its service if it hopes to stay ahead of this increasing competition. One way it has sought to do that is by offering Dial Directions service, which as of today is now available nationally: any location to any other location (by address or intersection).

The rest of this post is on Local Mobile Search.