Claims apps are the new websites.
Former SeeqPod founder Kasian Franks is working on a mobile applications search engine called Mimvi.
The site is live now, and supports iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and web apps, with iPad, Windows Mobile and Nokia to come.
"Ultimately, Mimvi anticipates hundreds of billions of searches will be conducted through its unified search platform," claims the company's About page, which points to a full launch this summer.
"The demand for a single search engine for all Mobile Apps is analogous to that of searching for websites fifteen years ago. In 1996, there were around 200,000 websites being indexed. Today, that number is about 240,000,000."
Mimvi's history is interesting. SeeqPod was a music search engine that allowed people to search for and play music elsewhere on the web. It was sued by labels including Warner Music Group and EMI, and eventually filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009.
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In February, Franks gave an interview to Wired's Epicenter blog about his new venture, Mimvi, which would apply SeeqPod's ideas to music videos, pulling in content from YouTube, Vevo, MTV and other sites.
However, it seems his plans changed quickly. According to SEC filings, in January Franks had bought 98.3% of the shares in startup Fashion Net.
According to its annual report in March, it was "planning to become a fashion marketing and consulting company serving couture apparel designers, manufacturers and specialty fashion retailers".
By May, the company's name had changed to Mimvi, and its nature was now "a technology company that develops advanced algorithms and technology for personalized search, recommendation and discovery services to the consumer and enterprise", with a focus on apps.
A separate page on Mimvi's corporate website splits out its expected revenue segmentation: the company hopes to make 33% of its money from advertising, 27% from licensing and revenue shares, 20% from micro-transactions, 13% from a keyword marketplace, and 7% from mobile transactions.
Here's a shot of the search engine in its current form:
Why go into so much depth on this story? SeeqPod was a truly disruptive startup in the music industry, so news that Franks has turned his attention to mobile apps is pretty interesting.
