Leap2 is aiming to re-invent search for the mobile device – for the small screen – something it doesn’t believe other apps have accomplished. Screenshot from leap2.com.
Nine days ago, Leap2 jumped into the spotlight with the soft launch of its first product, Leap2 Navigator, a mobile app with a new take on mobile search.
Tonight, the company will be holding a “Kansas City Launch Party” at OfficePort, which Leap2 co-founder and CEO Michael Farmer said is as much about thanking the people that have supported the startup to get it to this point as it is about staying in the public eye.
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“We have a lot of people working on this who’ve brought it to this point,” Farmer said by phone today, “and it’s been a big process the last year or so. Sometimes, I think you just pause and need to celebrate.”
Key metric: stickiness
Farmer wouldn’t share specific user numbers but confirmed that it has received more than 1,000 downloads.
“With our soft launch, the key metric we really wanted to see was stickiness,” Farmer said, adding that they weren’t focused on attracting a high number of users but just a big enough population to see if people continued to use it and if others would download it.
“I can tell you that is the thing we’re most pleased about,” Farmer said. He said that people are talking about it and pointed to high marks in the app store, currently averaging five stars from eight reviewers.
(Photo from linkedin.com.)
Early reviews
On its launch day, November 29, Leap2 received a thorough write-up from Erica Ogg of GigaOM, who wrote that she really liked the idea but provided a list of possible improvements.
“Overall,” Ogg wrote, “this app needs its speed turbocharged, and the design could use some polish — it’s a little rough compared to really well-designed apps. But I like where they’re going with it and I think there’s a great idea here.”
The following day on CNET, Rafe Needleman echoed Ogg’s review on the design and speed, and wrapped up his impressions with a short sentence: “But, oddly, it works.”
“I can’t give it a Rafe Recommends, and frankly, I don’t think it’ll do very well in a world of super-simple interfaces backed up by AI that does a good-enough job,” Needleman wrote. “But if you like getting results that are a bit better than everyone else’s, and don’t mind putting in the effort to get them, Leap2 is worth the download.”
What’s next
“With [stickiness],” Farmer said, “we have a bunch of different distribution channels that we are looking at to really expose Leap2 to a much broader population with the hope and the plan that they will continue to use it.”
Sometime in the next month, Leap2 will release its Anroid App. From there, it’s unclear what distribution channels – or partnerships – it’ll enter into as Farmer declined to give details on the subject.
Farmer did, however, hint at what’s to come for ad integration with Leap2. “In the Leap model,” Farmer said, “it is a very pure, straight-forward integration that we’re very excited about releasing here in the near term.”
Right now, Leap2’s closest competitor is Do@, another take on mobile search – it also searches across all downloaded apps of a user in addition to the web – that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in March and closed a $7 million funding round in July (according to CrunchBase).
Demo
On its website, Leap2 has posted the demo video below (no audio):
For more on Leap2, see our post: “Leap2 rethinks mobile search, launches app with all-in-one interface“.
