Contributor: Tech Mistress is not a so young ‘eccentric’, tech loving lady. She likes to share information in funny and witty ways, to inform but yet motivate. You can follow her on twitter – @AbiikeBlogger, and check out her blog – Mumuocrats.
Infomob is one of Nigeria’s search engine which offers a unique local search service and is available on Web and Mobile. The keyword here is ‘local’. Infomob connects buyers with sellers – by helping buyers find the right providers of products and services while helping sellers improve the efficiency of their marketing efforts. Integrated marketing at its very best.
The company has been operational since the mid of 2010, Infomob was formally gyst.com. According to the company the service was born out of the need for Nigerians to easily find the very best of businesses anytime, anywhere, anyplace within Lagos.
It is a fully owned subsidiary of E-motion Advertising, led by dynamic and creative business leaders with combine managerial experience of 35+ years in everything spanning from media, finance, oil and gas, technology and outdoor; E-motion Advertising has seen rapid growth and is leading industry innovation in ways never seen before.
Infomob’s information gathering system was arming a team of about 40 data gatherers known as indexers with smart phones to scout the length and breadth of the city and capture interesting details about local businesses like name, address, phone, GPS location, images, products, opening times/days etc and uploading that to the site by a click of the button.
Brilliant, you say. I tried it out and it was simply awesome. Now I am no longer a newbie on infomob, I started out my search with the keyword, ‘laundry’ and the location ‘Lagos’. Then I decided to be a little ridiculous and test the limit of the site. I keyed in the word ‘sex’ , I found unisex salons and a lingerie store.
Infomob has succeeded in cataloging over 20,000 local businesses unto a website in the first phase and built powerful search tools to make that data relevant and extremely user-friendly to end-users.
Now, Savvy businesses can increase their discoverability on the site by paying a ‘fee’ to increase their visibility and place them at the top of a search result that is relevant to their sector. Listing is free to businesses, but to increase one’s visibility, they would have to pay a tiny fee.
You can sign into the site using your Facebook account id.Infomob is a little bit limited for now due to its coverage area but hopefully they will get to other states.This service provided put www.infomob.com on the list of thirty brilliant African start-ups.
