Naver launched mobile version of its recently-unveiled Japanese web search service. Called Naver Mobile Beta, the service claims to have features that are especially tailored for mobile users.
Naver Japan blog offers a couple of screen shots of Naver Mobile Beta. The screen shot on the left side shows Naver's top search keywords ("Trend Ranking"). Users can do normal searches through Naver search box, and at the same time they can also browse through popular search keywords ("passive search", if you will). The latter might be popular among mobile users who just want to "kill time" and see if there is anything interesting happening right now.
The screen shot on the right side shows the mobile version of Naver Matome, Naver Japan's unique service that tries to combine the best of search and user content generation. (More information on Naver Matome can be found here.) This particular Matome page shows Shibuya's best gourmet restaurants; Users can add their own content to this page via their mobile phones.
One interesting remark from Naver's blog post: Naver expects people will use mobile services while they consume content via other channels, such as TV or magazines. That sounds just about right, and the use of mobile for information search and content consumption will only grow, it looks.
