The Evi app for iPhone.

The Internet buzz yesterday was all about Evi — the new natural speech digital assistant about to give Siri a run for her money.

We say “about” because Evi is currently broken. So many people downloaded the app (available for both iOS and Android), that the servers crashed on Day 1 — which was Monday. Since then, True Knowledge has had their dev team “on caffeine drips” and adding more servers to get Evi back online. (Incidentally, the PR on this release has been outstanding. Tune in to the Evi Twitter feed for Evi’s snarky and personal responses to disgruntled consumers.)

In light of all this attention on digital search assistants, we had to pause and reflect on what all this means for the state of mobile — and mobile searching.

Here’ what we know:

• As of November 2011, 39.5 percent of mobile users have smartphones.
• Mobile searches account for about 10 to 15 percent of all Internet searches.
• Mobile is the fastest growing medium, with an annual growth of 20 to 30 percent over the past four years.

Meaning there’s nowhere to go but up for mobile use and mobile search.

With new and sophisticated tools like Siri and Evi (or rather, Wolfram Alpha, True Knowledge and cutting edge voice recognition systems), performing a mobile search is as simple and convenient talking to a friend — and that’s exactly how the makers of these platforms want you to think of their products. By giving them names, voices and personalities (both assistants seem to have a witty streak), these are some of the most anthropomorphic apps available.

Here’s what we predict: Because it’s fun, personal and easier than typing in a browser, voice search will be a key factor in defining how we use mobile in the coming year.

Possible Side Effects of the Rise of the Digital Assistant:

• A new emphasis on knowledge bases. Knowledge bases like Wolfram Alpha and True Knowledge store millions of facts and can make trillions of “inferences.” They produce a rapid-fire question and answer process (which caters to the time-starved consumer looking for instant information). Knowledge bases provide easy access to information, eliminating results pages and clicks of the standard search engine query.
• Less traffic for Google, Bing and Yahoo! If Siri and Evi users are finding their answers in the knowledge bases at Wolfram Alpha and True Knowledge, search engines could start to lose business.
• More local search. Siri defaults to local search results, and, seemingly, so does Evi. And local search already makes up 40 percent of mobile searches, which will continue to grow as mobile use grows.
• More integration between phone, app and web. Siri controls the iPhone and Safari searches. As of now, Evi can only search the Internet. But these are both brand new technologies. In the future, we’ll see more synchronization between digital assistants and their phones. We predict it won’t belong before you can perform any command  — not just searches and phone tasks — with your voice.

Also, Android is reportedly building an assistant called “Majel,” upping the competition. Play on, digital assistants. We’ll be watching.