Back in march, Yahoo! announced the launch of its Mobile Publisher Services. As part of these services is the Mobile Media Directory, which is basically a way for mobile content providers to have their content indexed in Yahoo OneSearch and be searchable by mobile users.

The service is not live yet, however, I recently heard that it will be launched next month on the WAP portal of an important Asian carrier that signed a deal with Yahoo!. Basically, the service will allow Content Providers that are partners of this carrier to submit their mobile content (via a XML feed) so that users can find them via OneSearch on the carrier’s portal.

I cannot disclose the name of this carrier due to a NDA, but I believe it will be the first to provide Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory.

This is clearly a competing service to pure mobile content search players such as Medio, JumpTap, MotionBridge, or Fast.

Let’s also not forget Google, which is very likely to launch a mobile content search engine as well.

Yahoo! recently updated is Mobile Publisher Services page and there is now more details about the Mobile Media Directory :

Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory

The Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory enables you to bring your media content to Yahoo!’s large mobile user base. When you submit media to the directory, it will become available to the millions of mobile consumers searching for media content through Yahoo! oneSearch and other mobile search offerings powered by Yahoo!. For example, if you’re a publisher of ringtones and videos, your inventory will appear when someone searches for a particular song or recording artist. Click here to view examples.

Serving up your media products in such a highly–relevant manner increases the likelihood that consumers will actively trial them. And those who do will be able to submit ratings and reviews, so if your stuff is good, the world will know.

Adding your catalog to the Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory is straightforward. The directory accepts images, themes, multimedia files (music, video, etc), ringtones, games and other applications. You can associate names, detailed descriptions, tags, and other rich descriptors with your content – to ensure it will be served in as relevant a manner as possible.

What’s interesting is that users will be able to rate and review these mobile contents.

Here’s the user interface of Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory (source):

Users type in their search query into OneSearch’s searchbox. Here, the user is looking for games.

Search results page for “games”. Mobile Content results appear at the top of the page, and below are usual Web and Mobile pages.

And this is the Mobile Content page. What seems like an average rating (represented by stars)is displayed on top of the page, along with the mobile content’s name and a description. There’s a link “get it from publisher” that probably leads you to the mobile content provider’s purchase page.

Some screenshots are provided directly on the product page, which is really good for users. Then you have some reviews, which are also very useful as they serve as recommendations and allow people to discover new mobile content.

I was able to view a presentation of Yahoo Mobile Media Directory on the Asian carrier’s portal, and the user interface was the same than the one on the sreenshots above minus the ratings and reviews.

The service clearly looks impressive, and I can tell you that Yahoo! will now represent a major threat to white label mobile content search engines such as Medio Systems, Jumptap, or MotionBridge (owned by Microsoft).