Data on the Desktop
Spoke Software is known for making it easy for business people to gain access to contact information of other business people. The company has just made it even easier. Earlier this week, Spoke announced the launch of free search tools that will provider users easy access to Spoke's online contact directory by enabling them to leverage the search tools with Firefox, Google, Internet Explorer 7 and Yahoo.
Users can add the Spoke search option to Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 to find information about people and companies. From a Google homepage, users can conduct their search with the Spoke person/company finder. And by using the Spoke Yahoo Widget, users can find what they looking for directly from the desktop. Spoke's database contains contact information for more than 35 million people in more than 900,000 companies.
This is the perfect example of providing desktop shortcuts to a publisher's database. As publishers continue to seek ways in which to integrate their offerings into a user's workflow, this is yet another illustration of that strategy. Spoke is already known for easy accessibility, so adding these free search tools is truly a natural extension of the company's mission. Spoke's leadership obviously realizes that usage will increase if you make it easier to users to access your content--it's a simple concept, but one that can sometimes be forgotten. And what could be better than having it right on the desktop?--it doesn't get much easier than that.
Model of Excellence Award
We're pleased to announce that GreatSchools has been name a 2007 InfoCommerce Model of Excellence Award Winner.
Labels: greatschools, greatschools.net, Infocommerce, model of excellence
Organized Serendipity
I spent a few hours the other evening entranced by a relatively new service called Pandora. Type in a favorite artist or song into its intuitive user interface, and in no time you are listening to a seemingly endless list of songs that are musically similar to your entry, meaning in other words, that there is a high probability you will like them too.
It works. Song after song came on, and to virtually every one I found myself nodding in agreement that I liked it, in many cases, I really liked it. Most impressive of all, the music was from artists I had never heard of before, and probably would never have stumbled across on my own.
Since Pandora is another new web venture with lots of buzz and no apparent business model, I automatically assumed that there were some whiz-bang algorithms behind the scenes identifying similar music. On further research, however, I found that Pandora is powered by something called the Music Genome Project, a group of 50 or so music experts laboriously classifying songs by up to 400 musical characteristics each, with every characteristic having a rating from 1 to 5. In short, this remarkable new site is human- powered by a hand-crafted, classification scheme, a musical taxonomy.
This revelation reinforced my belief that organizing information (even information in audio form) adds tremendous value. There are dozens of sites that provide online access to music, but you have to know what you want to hear. Pandora's taxonomy reverses the process: tell it what you know you like, and it tells you everything similar to it. This is a much more rigorous approach than say, Amazon's recommendation system (which says "people who have bought the book you are buying have also bought these books"). The Amazon approach works well, but it has an inherent bias towards things that are already well known and mass market. And that's why Pandora is so exciting.
Apparently, Pandora will allow new and obscure artists to upload their music, have it categorized via the taxonomy, and thus expose it to listeners who might otherwise never come across this music. By organizing serendipity, Pandora has the potential to move beyond being a reference database to an audio buying guide. Type in your criteria (in the form of a song or artist you really like), and Pandora will provide you with a list of other music you are likely to enjoy, which you can presumably then be able to purchase. It's amazing how much you can accomplish with a little organization.
Labels: buyers' guide, buying guide, data publishing, Infocommerce, Pandora, taxonomy
A Marriage of Content and Software
CoStar Group and Accruent have teamed up to create an integrated product that will provide on-demand access to CoStar's commercial real estate data from within Accruent's software. Customers who can utilize this new offering must already have subscriptions to CoStar's property information services and Accruent's RPM solution.
The new product will supply retailers with the data they need to make better decisions about sites for new store locations with the goal of increasing revenues and lowering costs. It will also help them more effectively manage the lifecycle of their properties and leases. Customers will have access to CoStar's proprietary online database that includes more than 2.2 million commercial properties in the U.S., U.K. and France. The data includes 1.7 million retail tenant locations, which includes the top 5,500 retailers in the U.S., 655,000 shopping centers, general retail properties and parcels of retail-zoned land. Specific pieces of data customers will have access to include space availabilities, properties for sale (including land), sales comparables, store types, tenant rosters, frontage location, individual building photos and 360-degree aerials.
CoStar and Accruent have also pooled their resources to make working with that data even easier for customers. The new solution will automate data entry and site selection processes that are typically done manually. An alert feature, which will inform a retailer in a shopping center know when an anchor tenant closes or if a center's vacancy rate falls beyond a particular occupancy threshold, is one of many features CoStar and Accruent plan to launch down the road.
Even though these new features are yet to come, the product that CoStar and Accruent have launched is definitely a smart offering. This perfect example of 'content meets software' really illustrates what data companies need to do these days. Content is great, but it means a lot more to customers if it's combined with tools that make it more usable. Some data providers find they can add this type of functionality themselves; others choose the route CoStar took in this instance--partnering to acquire such capabilities. Either way, it's an important move for data providers to make. If you can help customers make better use of your data--and help them save money and make money in the process--they'll be customers for a long time.
Euromoney Sells Off Systematics Database
Euromoney, an international and events publisher, last week continued the sell-off of a collection of properties with the sale of Metal Bulletin's Systematics database to its management. Systematics contained data on the farm machinery and construction market and was acquired only last October when Euromoney bought Metal Bulletin.
The sale represents one of several conducted by Euromoney this year (Atalink was sold in March and EIC was sold in April) and completes Euromoney's goal of selling non-core Metal Bulletin business, according to a company statement. The company plans to focus its attention instead on the finance, metals, commodities and energy markets.
Euromoney's statement didn't mention the extent of that focus on these markets. But perhaps some acquisitions after this string of sales make sense. At the same time, the sale by Euromoney shouldn't diminish the value of the Systematics database, which posted gross assets of 117,000 pounds at the time of the sale. Hopefully, it will be a better fit in its new home and will continue to provide value to its new owners and customers.