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My take on the collision of technology, relationships and business along with a dose of opinion.

When Will the Age of the Consumer Come to Yellow Pages?: November 27, 2007
Excerpted from a Kelsey Group Blog by Michael Taylor

When Will the Age of the Consumer Come to Yellow Pages?

Empowering consumers to directly ask companies for what they want and to vocalize when they see something they do not agree with has certainly become the “norm” today. Bloggers have become citizen journalists, Web sites are “community owned” and supported, and brands are allowing consumers to direct new TV ads – all indications that major companies have understood the change in the marketing rules. Time Magazine in fact named “you” as the person of the year.

According to the Time article: “It’s about the many wresting power from the few … and how that will not only change the world, but change the way the world changes. In other words, ‘you’ have the power, and brands and its institutions must get ready for the changes that ‘you’ will demand.”

The Yellow Page brand continues to remain closed to consumers, and consumers are showing their displeasure by refusing to accept or keep the print book and opting for local search options on the major search engines rather than going to publisher sites.

The Yellow Pages industry has yet to fully embrace and understand that its advertiser base and content is currently less of a strategic advantage in the age of the consumer.
Consumers are in charge and they are vocal about what they want and who they support. Yellow Pages as a group has done a mediocre job of telling consumers why the print and online directories are relevant products in their lives, how they are changing to meet new demands, and how consumers can continue to benefit from the most comprehensive database of local businesses available.

In this age of “empowered consumers,” what can publishers do to understand what consumers want and how they want to interact with the massive local database Yellow Pages offers? Does the industry really have a grasp on how the way people search for local information has changed and how can this understanding change the way the print product is formatted and produced?

The goal should be to listen and learn from consumers about what makes for a great local search experience, then delivering it in real, differentiated, meaningful features and benefits.

The empowered consumer shift is well under way and now is the time for the Yellow Pages industry to use its considerable local advantage while it can to swing the pendulum back toward viewing the directory product line as the most comprehensive source of local business information whenever and wherever people need it.
My Take
It ain't never gonna happen.
The Yellow Pages will not change - at least not until they are forced to. Nor can they - their functionally obsolete printed medium is so far out of the consciousness of 20-something's making their first major purchases - homes, appliances - that it would require past life regression therapy to resurrect.
The yellow tome will soon be amusing history. "Hey kids, when I was young the coal man delivered house-to-house in a horse-drawn wagon" will become "Hey kids, when I was young they dropped big yellow phone directories on my driveway that we used to use to find phone numbers. Isn't that unbelievable?"

Tags: yellowpages, localsearch, socialsearch, yougottacall

Wednesday November 28, 2007 - 07:24pm (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Lead-Generator Yodle Pulls in $12M: by Ken Schachter 26 November 2007, 13:55

Yodle, which aims to solve the knotty problem of using the web to connect potential customers with the local plumber, pizzeria, or podiatrist, has landed $12 million in a second round led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the company announced Monday.
Also participating was prior investor Bessemer Venture Partners, which led a $3 million first round in 2006.

Yodle competes against the many print and online Yellow Pages companies as well as Los Angeles-based ReachLocal, which in October closed a $55.2 million fourth round of venture capital led by Rho Ventures. The Kelsey Group, a Princeton, New Jersey, research house, forecasts that global local search revenue from Internet Yellow Pages, local search, and wireless will climb to $13 billion in 2010 from $3.4 billion in 2005.

Andreas Stavropoulos, managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, said New York City-based Yodle tackles “the unsolved problem” of using the web to generate sales leads for local businesses.

“Of all the companies I’ve seen, it’s the closest to having a scalable model,” he said. “It’s a huge market and one that’s very difficult to crack in a scalable way.”

Yodle Chief Executive Court Cunningham, said the company, founded as Natpal in 2005, plans to ramp up to 10,000 customers from the current 1,000 within 20 months.

Despite the web’s frantic growth, historically, local businesses like the neighborhood locksmith would never consider advertising on the web, Mr. Cunningham acknowledged. But with more local content migrating online, the web has become an important source for finding consumers.

“We’ve hit that tipping point,” he said.

The company, which expects to expand its work force from 70 now to about 200 within a year, helps local businesses buy keywords on the major search engines and guide web surfers who click on the link to a Yodle-designed web site set up for the client. Should a potential customer call, the message is delivered through the Yodle phone monitoring system, which provides statistical analysis.

Yodle reaches local businesses by advertising on the web and through a direct sales force, Mr. Cunningham said. The company offers service in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., and plans to launch in up to 10 additional cities next year.

Mr. Cunningham, a former executive at online advertising company Doubleclick, said Yodle is growing revenue at a rate of 350-400 percent per year and that the new cash infusion is expected to bring the company to profitability.
My Take
There is a big difference between a "lead" and a "sale". This should go without saying. Yet Yodle seems to offer "leads" - leads that are expensive and time consuming for a small business to convert into revenue.

Yodle may be bypassing the opportunity to create something revolutionary. Are they going to settle on being another expensive VC funded Web start up?

Granted they offer a unique feature - direct contact with the consumer.

But how is this scalable? When I think 'scalable' I think Craigslist. Did Craigslist need so much VC$?

When I think 'direct sales force' I think expensive. Did a CraigsList sales rep knock on your door?

Is this why they need $12 Million?

Isn't this the opposite of the direction that the Web is heading?

Tags: localsearch, socialsearch, yellowpages, yougottacall

Tuesday November 27, 2007 - 12:21pm (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
The Crazy Local Ad Biz: Excerpted from article by Chris Silver Smith
Nov. 26, 2007 at 7:35am Eastern

Internet Yellow Pages: Worth The Effort?

Here at the end of 2007, it's painfully obvious that the local search advertising market remains highly fragmented. Numerous local search experts attending the recent SMX Local & Mobile Conference reiterated the observation that businesses seeking to target local audiences have a plethora of options, and identifying and selecting the right locally-focused sites can be an overwhelming task for small business people who have limited time to devote to the task.

So, where should you choose to devote your time and budget? What's the minimum number of sites you should appear in and which are the best for you? This article is geared towards businesses targeting local audiences, rather than businesses who do nationwide advertising—and specifically, how to choose the best internet yellow pages ("IYPs") for your ads and those where it's important to spend time optimizing your free listings.

This might seem ironic, considering that I've suggested that sites which are little more than online yellow pages might follow the expected decline of traditional print yellow pages. But, internet yellow pages overall continue to enjoy very high traffic according to independent reporting agencies, and IYPs are evolving to stay relevant in a post-print era. Also, there's fairly solid industry research that shows that true conversion rates (sales) are higher associated with referrals from internet yellow pages compared with many other channels, including major search engines.

Yellow pages sales reps who show up on your doorstep may blast you with tons of statistics on why you should buy their company's ads versus those of competitors or other media. The stats always sound good, but you've been in business long enough it's hard to trust anything coming out of a sales rep's lips. So, what do you do? If you live in a major metro area, the whole thing is compounded by the fact that you likely get jabbered at by sales reps from a few different yellow pages companies who all have books in the same area, and who all have online business directory products as well. They all spout different numbers at you, and they can't all be the best, most-used, and most-worthwhile can they?

This is nothing new—Yellow Pages sales reps have historically loved to play tricks like making you believe that you should choose to advertise in their books over the competition's because their books are bigger/fatter. The premise is that if more people are advertising in one book, it might be bigger, and if more people are advertising in one book over another, maybe they all know something you don't, right? Wrong! Unfortunately, a classic con job when starting to distribute books in a new territory involves the company printing books on thicker paper, making their books appear to be bigger than their competition's. Even if they had more ads, all that means is that the particular company sold more ads than the other—not that more people actually would see those ads, necessarily.

Chris "Silver" Smith is Lead Strategist at Netconcepts. The Locals Only column appears on Mondays at Search Engine Land.

My Take
Doesn't it seem crazy that there are so many choices for local advertising? Especially when you consider that all business owners know where their best leads come from. They just don't have the tool to connect with them.
Here comes YouGottaCall.com. Please hang in for just another month or so.
Thank you,

- - Tim

Tags: localsearch, socialsearch, yellowpages, yougottacall

Monday November 26, 2007 - 06:00pm (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Nearly 200 Web 2.0 sites that didn't make it: Excerpted from Everything 2.0 by Bob Stumpel

DEAD 2.0 - Nearly 200 Web 2.0 sites that didn't make it
Going through this chore, I've found almost a hundred links that died since the first time that I saw them. You will find them in the list below, together with the cases that I've reported on before. Some of these simply stopped their activities, or changed names, or rerout their traffic to other domains. Others were acquired by third parties and went up into their websites. Furthermore, I took out a series of links to websites that never seem to come out of their perpetual stealth mode. Nevertheless, please notify me if you see new life in this Death List:

Betafy - Get alerts about new Web 2.0 companies - About
Saulweiner - Meta Web 2.0 list - About
Web20interact - Rate & rank Web 2.0 sites (Icelandic) - About
Woeba - How to Web 2.0 list - About

Breakinglocals - Local artists and fans community - Audio
Genielab - Explore, recommend & rate music - Audio
Ituneslove - Share your music tastes - Audio
Readio - Blog2podcast - Audio
Stridr - Upload & share or sell music - Audio

Blabb - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Bookmarkme - Help create & download bookmarks - Bookmarking
Bringalink - Submit better links on front page articles' content - Bookmarking
Linklog~ - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Lookmarks - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Maple - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Motorken - Digg automotive news - Bookmarking
Mybookmarkmanager - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Pixpix - Bookmark & share media - Bookmarking
Plueballs - Bookmark, rank & share film news - Bookmarking
Socialmarks - Social bookmarking - Bookmarking
Webringr - Create, send, manage & share links - Bookmarking

3Dplanets - VR chat community - Communicating
Ajchat - Create chat rooms - Communicating
Gtalkr (founders took job at Google) - Google Talk, Flickr, YouTube, feeds - Communicating
Hotxt (now Trutap) - Skype for sms - Communicating
Loquendotts - Text2sneeze - Communicating
Plugaid - Start or participate in discussions & take them with you - Communicating
Quickmail - Email2RSS - Communicating
Sametalk - Chat with other site visitors - Communicating
Swarmthedotcom* - See how other people browse & chat (Firefox) - Communicating
Talktrust - Call anonymously - Communicating
Tello - Locate & collaborate with your key contacts - Communicating
Vicito - Group text service - Communicating

Chipleaders (now Partypoker.com) - Poker community - Community
Eventell - Create & share records of events - Community
Facebox - Now Netlog.com - Community
Goop - Social tagging & more - Community
Peerprofile - Publish & share your profiles - Community
Pinbc - Pakistani int'l business and (?!) family networking - Community
Pissr - People in search of gender neutral restrooms - Community
Singlestatus - Myspace alert mash-up on member status - Community
Soapboxit - Share reviews on everything & everybody - Community
Woolygans - Street culture community - Community
Zamily - Connect & share with your family - Community

Tickethappy - Shared CRM management - CRM

Casabobo~ - Put youraself on the map & date - Dating
Subwaycrush - Dating(?) - Dating

Mockingbird - Collaborative design (Stealth) - Design

Mecenax - Donate & enjoy drm protected content - DRM

ÁndaleSmall online business sales toolsEcommerce
Blogbuy - Social market place - Ecommerce
Correlates - Parallel product search - Ecommerce
Localspring - Social yellow pages directory - Ecommerce
Skombo - Sell & buy rare music - Ecommerce
Slister - Bookmark & list products - Ecommerce
Zipingo - Find local business based on community input - Ecommerce

Helpwinmybet - Help this guy to get laid in a 3some - Economy
Kritx - Social reviewing - Economy
Lendmonkey - Trade everything - Economy
Myfreelanceauction - Buy or sell web services - Economy
Oolsi - Share links to free things - Economy

Ilovemynanny - Nanny jobs & support - Employment
Skillmeter - Identify, measure & retain talents thru assessments - Employment

Frugalbetty - Manage your spendings - Finance
Fundamentalee - Due diligence portal - Finance
Fygo - Connect to network, borrow or lend money - Finance
Investle - Community based investment decision making - Finance
Vcdiggz - Community based deal sourcing firm - Finance

Justcurious - Q&A at random - Fun

Abetx - Auction betting exchange - Gambling
Betbutler (now Danbook.com) - Betting exchange - Gambling
Betfanatic - Betting exchange - Gambling
Betxc - Betting exchange - Gambling
Binexx - Bet on stocks - Gambling
Bluevex - Bet on sports & stocks - Gambling
Elite128 - Betting exchange - Gambling

Crowdiq - Social delphi; set up your own exchange for futures - Gaming
Fotograb* - Participate in & create photo treasure hunts - Gaming
Llor - Build your street - Gaming

Eurotopmodel~ - Rate photo models (map mash-up) - Geo
Packagemapper - Track your package on a map - Geo
Pheromonetrail - Share places & sites & persons - Geo
Placestodo - Post & share places & things - Geo
Topspot-ornot - Spot & review locations (map mash-up) - Geo

Reputata - Manage your reputation (stealth) - Identity

Brainjams - Share knowledge & collaborate on ideas - Knowledge
Coursecafe - Share online research - Knowledge
Kweschun - Q&A - Knowledge

Giftornot - Get ideas for gifts (Amazon mash-up) - List
Tastydish - Report, tag & share restaurants - List
Ziblit - Recommend businesses to other consumers - List

Buymyprofile - Buy or sell ad space on profile pages - Marketing
Ecityxista - Buy internet real estate to increase traffic - Marketing
Feedweaver - Add ads based on keywords you select to your website - Marketing
My-brand - Manage online advertising (now Ads-click) - Marketing
Targetedpixel - Buy pixel space for 5 years - Marketing
Web20milliondollarhomepage - Pixel ads - Marketing

Babamix - Upload, mix & share your media - Multimedia
Grouper (now Crackle.com) - Upload, create & share media - Multimedia
Memoryark (now: Ourstory) - Publish & share stories & photos - Multimedia
Mexbrowser - Stream all media in this browser - Multimedia
Mophone (now Mixxer.com) - Store & share mobile content - Multimedia
Shooter7 - Send photos, videos, music (app) - Multimedia
Streamdrive - Upload & share multimedia - Multimedia
Streamload* - Store & share your media (now Mediamax) - Multimedia
Swapcore - Watch, read & swap it - Multimedia
Swapzies - Store & share or sell multimedia - Multimedia
Tagworld - Share music & photos - Multimedia
Woomp - Upload & share art, photos & video (now: Cpluv.com) - Multimedia

180n - Choose what's news - News
Blogdex - Folksonomied blog topics selection - News
Diggnews - Bookmark, rank & share interesting news - News
Getyourdaily - Compile & share your daily news - News
Googl-r - Views Google news as a tag cloud - News
Newradio - Find & vote for news - News
Nulltag - News tag clouds - News
On2go - News & alerts on your mobile - News
Podolicious - Personalized podcast news - News
Squeet - Get news, blog articles or feeds in your email - News

Jotspot - Take one set of notes, live - Office
Pianist - Save your notes online - Office
Stickytag - Make & share notesOffice
Studicious - Online note taking & sharing - Office
Studybuddy - Share notecards - Office

Orca - Online personal desktop - OS
Parakey - Web OS - OS

Linatree - Download, print & assemble your photo camera - Personal manufacturing

Bettr - Vote on best Flickr photos - Photo
Imagegravy - Host & sell images - Photo
Imobio - Store, share & rank your mobile photos online - Photo
Ivala - Order a photo montage (Latvian) - Photo
Kollabor8 - Collaborate on image mutations - Photo
Parazz - Store & share photos - Photo
Picturecloud - 360o view on your pics - Photo
Pixoh (now: Snipshot) - Edit pics online; relaunched as Snipshot - Photo
Webimager - Capture screens & upload them to Flickr - Photo

Groupsharp (acquired by HubSpot) - Share data, files & wikis - Productivity

Barewiki (now: Ottowiki) - Make a wiki in seconds - Publishing
Pmachine - CMS - Publishing
Socialcookbook - Post, rate & review recipes - Publishing
Tripster - Publish, recommend & share travel experiences (stealth) - Publishing

Fanaticzone - Digg sports - Rating
Jazznoodle - Digg politics - Rating
Newsbump - Digg news - Rating
Polidiggs - Digg political news - Rating
Relishio - Digg news - Rating
Showbloggers - Digg tv shows - Rating
Thenorp - Digg porn links - Rating
Xboxkicks - Digg Xbox news - Rating

Almondrocks - Share feeds - RSS
Beeplet~ - Set up reminders & get alerts - RSS
Egorss - Create meta feeds - RSS
Feedcatch - Manage your feeds (now Feedshake) - RSS
Immediat - Messenger notifications of feeds - RSS
Peoplefeeds - Aggregate personal content - RSS
Touchstone - Suscribe to your news & alerts - RSS

Broadmining - Meta search - Search
Cellpedia - Search for mobile phones - Search
Collaborativerank - Search & rank - Search
Dodloo - Shopping info aggregator - Search
Gadabe* - RSS metasearch (relaunched as Tagjag) - Search
Googlecircles - Find common interest groups - Search
Iamsearched - Are you googled-notification service - Search
Jyamit - Search for places - Search
Knover - Discover who's connected to what & whom - Search
Makidi - Search (stealth) - Search
Opsdo - Hyper meta search - Search
Outfoxed - Social search (now Lijit) - Search
Podzinger - Now Everyzing (http://www.everyzing.com/) - Search
Tanbul - Google-like search, better algorithm for user input - Search
Toptaggers* - Tag, rank & share links - Search
Zigtag - Search, save & share results - Search

Lifeio - All to the people - Software
Msgurl - Shorten links - Software

Fold - Personal portal (stopped) - Startpage
Fyuze - Feed portal - Startpage
Homper - Personal portal - Startpage
Start - Personal portal - Startpage
Zoobio - Startpage (now Zambio) - Startpage

Blogbeat (acquired by Feedburner) - Compare websites' Alexa rankings (formerly known as Alexaholic) - Stats
Dpolls - Create, vote for & search polls - Survey
Socialmeter - Check your 2.0 site's popularity in 2.0-sphere - Survey

Groopus - Visualize your social context based on tags - Tagging
Tagspy - I tag so I am - Tagging
Tagsy - Social bookmarking & feed management - Tagging
Talkinghub (now: Blogforum) - Add tags to your forum - Tagging
Thinglinks - Connect virtual with real world thru sema codes - Tagging

Beedeo - Upload & share videos - Video
Camraoke - Submit, rate & share karaoke videos - Video
Jimmystv - Post, watch & share videos - Video
Openvlog - Upload & record video - Video
Pixpo - Broadcast your video site (now: Mixpo) - Video
Shood~ - Upload & share videos (crashed after launch) - Video
VNCCasts - Watch live broadcasts of people's computer screens - Video
Woomu - Submit, vote for & rank videos - Video
Yashi - Upload & share video(Merged with Bolt) - Video

Posted by Bob at 00:47

Labels: DEAD 2.0, INDEX 2.0

My Take

A good reminder that just because it can be built does not mean it should be. Or at least not built without planning, research and funding.

Tags: web2.0, yougottacall

Sunday November 25, 2007 - 05:27pm (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Rapid Growth of WOM for National Brands: Word-of-Mouth Marketing On The Upswing

by Mark Walsh, Friday, Nov 16, 2007 7:00 AM ET

WORD-OF-MOUTH MARKETING IS EXPECTED TO surpass $1 billion in 2007, making it one of the fastest-growing alternative media formats. In a new research report, PQ Media also predicts that spending on word-of-mouth marketing will grow at an annual rate of 30.4%, and will hit $3.7 billion by 2011.

Helping drive the growth of WoM marketing are Web 2.0 technologies such as social networks, blogs that allow consumers to share information, and opinions about brands and products. While 90% of WoM activity is estimated to take place offline, marketers are shifting more spending to online vehicles that can provide more measurable results. Findings of the PQ Media study were presented Thursday at the Word-of Mouth Marketing Summit 2007 in Las Vegas.

What exactly is WoM marketing? PQ Media defines it as an alternative marketing strategy that uses online and offline tactics involving peer "influencers," WoM communities and brand advocates to encourage consumer dialogue about products and services.

The category doesn't include what are considered unethical tactics such as spam, "sock puppeting," (assuming a false identity online to promote a product or company online), or paying someone to talk about a brand without disclosing that they work for the company.

Also not counted in WoM estimates were spending on activities like in-store product sampling, coupons and loyalty programs, and advertising on social networks and blogs. So Facebook's new social ads, which let marketers attach messages to the communications of members who have identified themselves as "fans" of a particular brand, would not be included.

Only marketing through fully disclosed brand advocates on blogs or other online outlets would be included. "The brand advocates or agents have to state that 'We are hired by this particular company,' or 'we were given a sample of a product,'" explained Leo Kivijarv, vice president of research for PQ Media.

Wal-Mart and Sony both ran into trouble last year when they used paid writers to create authentic-seeming blogs evangelizing their brands.

Kivijarv says 2006 was a turning point for WoM marketing, when it went from being an experimental media buy to becoming "increasingly included in fully integrated marketing campaigns." Marketers are no longer just monitoring WoM efforts, but expecting to see a return on investment in increased sales or buzz surrounding a product.

That trend is expected to continue in 2007, when WoM will grow an estimated 37.7% to $1.35 billion. Overall, however, WoM remains the smallest marketing segment, capturing less than 1% of industry dollars. Direct marketing, branded entertainment, and business-to-business promotions garner the lion's share of spending.

Kivijarv estimates that there are about 200 agencies and technology companies that either specialize in WoM marketing or have units dedicated to it.

While no specific data is yet available on WoM spending by product category, food and beverage, media and entertainment, and sports and recreation are among the most active in employing WoM strategies.

Mark Walsh can be reached at walsh@mediapost.com

My Take

Mr. Walsh's article covers data and projections for national brands. WOM is becoming a key strategy to build sales and customer loyalty.

But if you are a local contractor or professional you're already part of the Word-of-Mouth Wave . "Huh? How's that?"

Well, do you Feel your ears burning? Your clients, customers, friends and neighbors are talking about you right now in the grocery store, on the sidelines of sporting events, walking their dog and at PTA meetings. They're more of them are registering with social networks each day where they discuss carpooling, child raising, retirement planning, etc. And guess who else they're talking about. You.

The Web will soon allow you to engage your satisfied clients using these same social networks - and convert more of these discussions into qualified leads for you. You in turn will be able to reward them and strengthen your relationship - while benefiting the community.

It's the new advertising. There are many benefits to your company including fully variable expenses and improved cash flow.

Stay tuned. The YouGottaCall.com "Connect-gine" is coming.

Tags: affiliatemarketing, connect-gine, facebook, localsearch, offline/online, prosumerism, socialnetwork, socialsearch, viralmarketing, wordofmouth, yougottacall

Saturday November 17, 2007 - 08:58am (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments