LinkedIn Moving into Expert Advice Space

LinkedIn is expanding its offerings with a research service that will connect users with experts in the financial services field. According to LinkedIn, the new service will help hedge fund managers and investment banks find experts who can advise them.

LinkedIn will be able to connect these financial services professionals with people who are connected to companies they are interested in investing in, just as it currently connects individuals who wish to communicate for various business and personal reasons. The new service is slated to launch during the first half of the year. It will be available by subscription, but those fees have not yet been announced.

This isn't a revolutionary idea, however. Such services are already available from Yahoo Answers and the Gerson Lehrman Group, which boasts a network of more than 175,000 on its website, is certainly a formidable player in this space. However, it's a very interesting idea. The fact that the Gerson Lehrman Group has been very successful in this space is solid proof that there is a need and a market for such an offering. In fact, this could potentially yield some tough competition for Gerson Lehrman in the near future.

Is Brown the New Yellow?

I have been saying for many years now that the continuing financial success of the yellow pages industry is due more to inertia than innovation. The only reason the industry hasn't followed the rapid downward spiral of the newspaper industry is its huge market momentum and unusual business model which provides strong competitive defenses. But as we all well know, the Internet has a funny habit of trashing old business models while simultaneously leveling the competitive playing field.

The sublime magic of yellow pages has always been that the advertising is the content. The layer of free content that yellow pages provide is a thin one indeed. Once a yellow pages directory reaches a critical mass of advertising, there's enough content to make it useful to consumers, spurring rapid user adoption. And with rapid user adoption, there is the opportunity to charge a lot more for advertising, something yellow pages publishers do with gusto.

As I said: an incredible business model. But it's not a model you can expand too quickly on a geographic basis, because as you scale, getting a critical mass of advertising becomes harder. At the same time, adding high value content or social networking features isn't a simple alternative. That's because as you add more information about businesses, you decrease their interest in advertising. And advertisers paying thousands of dollars a year haven't shown much interest in ratings or customer comments that they can't control.

Some publishers, such as Zagat and Angie's List, have attempted to flip the model by charging consumers for access to deep and unbiased information on businesses generated by consumers. It's a viable model, but such products are hard to build and grow slowly.

That's why I was intrigued to read the launch announcement for a UK-based online yellow pages called The Brownbook. It's a wiki- based yellow pages. Brownbook supplies the same thin content layer found in all yellow pages (business name, address, phone, business category), then encourages users to add comments and reviews to business listings. Businesses are encouraged to maintain their own listings, and can add a wealth of supplemental information for a modest fee. To get around advertiser's traditional distaste for user comments and ratings, Brownbook neatly addresses the issue by turning it into a marketing opportunity for businesses: burnish your image by resolving negative comments and other issues right on the site, proof of your concern and responsiveness. It's an innovative approach Brownbook can afford to take as a start-up.

Scaling issues still exist (Brownbook offers national coverage), but they are less daunting than for a traditional yellow pages.

Brownbook has a tremendous amount of work in front of it to simultaneously build audience and a base of advertisers. That said, the business model is fresh, interesting and well executed. I might go so far as to say it's exciting -- a word rarely used in the same sentence as yellow pages.

Labels: angie's list, brownbook, thebrownbook, yellow pages, zagat

Polk, OnWheels Collaborate On Automotive Studies

Automotive information and marketing solutions provider R.L. Polk & Co. and On Wheels Inc., a multicultural multimedia company, announced last month that they will jointly publish findings from Polk's automotive studies that highlight the dynamics within multicultural markets. The findings will highlight multicultural issues for the automotive industry and its consumers.

Polk and On Wheels will spend the next year researching and communicating the buying trends, purchase behaviors, loyalty patterns and attitudes of automotive buyers in multicultural communities.

On Wheels publishes a stable of magazines that includes African Americans On Wheels, Asians On Wheels and Latinos On Wheels. It also publishes digital editions of African Americans On Wheels and Latinos On Wheels and maintains two web sites: www.onwheelsinc.com and www.AsiansOnWheels.com.

This is a very clever partnership between a data provider (that possesses the statistical insight) and a media company (that has the market insight). Combined, they have the potential to create some very powerful and valuable information for the marketplace--information that automotive industry players most likely do not have access to from other sources. It's also information that neither Polk nor On Wheels could offer on their own. Joining forces on such an initiative makes perfect sense and the industry will certainly benefit from the unique data that is collected. The directory and database industry will undoubtedly see similar collaborations of this nature going forward. They're really a win-win for everyone involved.

OAG, FCm Form Data-Software Partnership

Flight information and data solutions company OAG (Official Airline Guide) has partnered with FCm Travel Solutions, a worldwide corporate travel and expense management consultancy, to create a one-stop travel planning and booking service.

OAG Travel Planner Pro, which will officially launch in early April, is an online business travel planning application that will enable users (business travelers and professional travel arrangers) to plan, book and manage multiple trip plans for multiple travelers. Users will also be able to create complex itineraries.

Before the creation of the new application, OAG customers had to rely on other providers to book their travel. They could only use OAG's information to create their itineraries. Now, OAG will be able to serve their complete travel needs on just one site.

This is just another great example of a data company partnering with a software firm to create a very powerful new tool. Such partnerships are a vital component in content providers' continuing quest to become one-stop shops for their customers.

Data alone isn't going to create traction for a web site. Customers want and need more than that. The content-software partnership is a true necessity in our 24/7 world.

Carroll Launches Local Database Product

Carroll Publishing last week launched GovSearchLocal, an online searchable database that contains contact information for officials at the state, city and county levels. This includes contacts for all three branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial).

Other content contained in GovSearchLocal includes federal government offices located within a state, annual expenditures, monthly payroll figures and numbers of employees. The information is updated daily and the database offers broad functionality, such as the ability to build and download unlimited contact lists, the creation of organization charts and the ability to perform targeted searches by person, position, office, facility or congressional district.

Customers who only need content for one particular state are best served by this product, which eliminates the need for them to purchase a national database that is naturally more expensive.

This is a smart move by Carroll Publishing. The company recognizes the fact that many customers only want and need specific slices of data. Instead of requiring customers who just need local data from one state (the customers Carroll is targeting with GovSearchLocal) to purchase a complete national database, the company is enabling those customers to purchase just that one slice.

It's definitely worth it for Carroll and other publishers to follow this strategy. Instead of alienating a customer and losing a sale, publishers can instead begin small, yet valuable relationships with customers; relationships that have the potential to grow over time. If customers' needs change, they will know exactly who to turn to for their content needs. For directory and database publishers who can easily slice and dice their data to produce streamlined offerings, the effort is worth it. A small sale is better than no sale at all.