Yandex launches voice social search app for U.S.

PanARMENIAN.Net - Yandex, known as the Russian equivalent of Google, has launched Wonder, a voice social search app, on Apple’s iOS platform for the United States, the Russian internet company said, according to RIA Novosti.

The app allows owners of Apple iPhones from the U.S. to search data on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare.

Yandex is launching the app as a “pure experiment,” a company spokesperson told the technology news website TechCrunch, adding that it will soon be incorporating some Wonder technologies into more apps.

Wonder responds to spoken or written queries from users and displays results in a horizontal format. The number of types of questions is limited, but may be expanded depending on user feedback.

The application comes out of Yandex Labs, Yandex’s U.S.-based team, and combines data from users’ different social networks, using readily available APIs, with Nuance-powered voice services. It offers recommendations on where to go, what to see, music to buy, etc.