Fresh Ideas from a Stale Sector

Pinch me, I must be dreaming: I am seeing product innovation and fresh thinking coming from a most unlikely source: a major yellow pages publisher, in this case, Idearc.

I wrote several weeks back about the new Idearc "Super Guarantee" program. Participating yellow pages advertisers get (for a fee) to run a special logo in their ads that guarantees customer satisfaction with Idearc as the arbitrator. If a consumer is dissatisfied with one of these participating advertisers, Idearc steps in to mediate. If no happy compromise can be arranged, Idearc will pay the consumer up to $500. Now here's a real reason to use a specific yellow pages product.

A recent FT.com article points out a host of other innovations, starting with a "Super Trade Exchange," an online barter site for the exclusive use of Idearc advertisers.

But perhaps the most intriguing idea out of Idearc is to re-position itself as "an ad agency for small businesses." The company's vaunted salespeople have been re-branded as media consultants, and they're being trained to help small business advertisers with all their advertising needs, including direct marketing. Idearc is even contemplating the idea of becoming a sales rep for its arch-enemy: local newspapers.

I've talked for many years about this notion of buying guide publishers filling more of the advertising needs of their small business advertisers. In fact, many online buying guide publishers are already driving significant revenue by helping their advertisers build and maintain websites and manage their search engine pay-per-click programs. Key to the success of initiatives like this is a simple fact: almost nobody talks to small businesses about their advertising and marketing needs. Anyone who reaches out to this community has an immediate opportunity. That's why yellow pages salespeople, who at best visit their advertisers once a year, can still morph almost overnight into trusted advertising advisors: there isn't anybody else out there. Buyers' guides in vertical markets are arguably in even a stronger position, because they know the industry's products, its issues and its lingo.
Keep an eye on Idearc. The ideas are strong, they're being put to use quickly, and execution looks strong. Maybe someday they'll apply some of this creative energy to developing a better company name!

Labels: Idearc

You Are Here

Yesterday, I stumbled across a press release from a German company called NOUSguide announcing its new deal with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. NOUSguide develops interactive museum guides that can be viewed on iPhones and other devices, and that can be distributed on-site at museums via Wi-Fi, or globally via the iPhone App Store.

I don’t usually pay too much attention to specialized products like this, but this is noteworthy because it flips the whole concept of guidebooks on mobile devices on its head. Think about it: all the buzz on mobile devices for the last ten years has been on coupling them with GPS capabilities to make it easy to figure out where to go. The classic example is an online yellow pages that helps you select a nearby restaurant and then directs you there. What NOUSguide does is exactly the reverse. Instead of telling you how to get somewhere, it tells you about where you are.

I immediately thought about city visitor guides. Imagine an online application of the city guide that was centered on telling you about what’s around you at any given moment. It’s surely more interesting, useful and valuable than the traditional endless lists of everything you can do in a ten mile radius. With a good database behind it, an online guide such as this could even be programmed to beep or send alerts when the user was in range of a certain type of museum, store or restaurant. There would be endless potential ways to add even more value to such an application. If such guides currently exist, I am not aware of them, but it’s clear we’ve only begun to explore the explosive possibilities when you marry mobile devices database and geolocation capabilities. You can look forward to learning more about taking data mobile at InfoCommerce Group’s annual conference, Data Content09, October 27-29, The Ritz Carlton Philadelphia.

Labels: datacontent09, nousguide

Who's Hiring?

The Folio Alert in my inbox yesterday had as its headline "Questex lays off 40." That's just one of an almost daily parade of layoff announcements I am seeing from the world of B2B publishing. It would be easy to conclude that B2B publishing is, to use the words of industry pundit Paul Conley, "in a death spiral."

That's why a news item that noted Bloomberg is on track to make over 1,000 new hires this year is so noteworthy. Why all the hiring? It's primarily to support future growth on the data side of its business.

One thousand new jobs. And this in the midst of a steep economic downturn. From a company that depends on a decimated industry - financial services - for its revenue. It's hard not to be impressed.
So what's Bloomberg doing right? We can start with being a subscription-based business with multi-year contracts that lets it ride out economic downturns more easily than most. We see a strong brand and good quality content. We see a product that is integral to client workflow. We see high-value information that drives high stakes business decisions. But most importantly of all, we see data.

Labels: Bloomberg, Folio Magazine, Paul Conley

Public Data Central

The federal government's brand-spanking-new Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, was interviewed yesterday by Government Computer News about some of his planned initiatives for the federal government.

What's most notable about these remarks is that high on Kundra's agenda is an ambitious plan to centralize federal databases and data feeds at a new site to be called data.gov. Most significantly, Kundra sees this rich pool of data fueling all sorts of new products and creating new business opportunities.

The article notes that in his former position as CIO of the District of Columbia, he launched an initiative called "Apps for Democracy" that encouraged businesses, non-profits and individuals to build applications based on District of Columbia data so the government wouldn't have to do the work in-house. Now that's progressive thinking!

What are the implications for data publishers, particularly those already making heavy use of government data? This initiative could be a two-edged sword. On one hand, it creates real pressure to make more government data conveniently accessible. On the other hand, it's likely to create more competition from online start-ups start seeking to capitalize on the value of these new databases.

The secret for success is not simply to re-format or even aggregate these government databases, but add value to them. Government data are almost by definition messy data, so there is value in scrubbing and normalizing it. Government data are almost always not current, so value can be added by bringing them up to date. Government databases are often deep, but not with information that's necessarily of any commercial value. Data augmentation can often add tremendous value.

Profiting from this promised flood of new government databases means treating them as starting points, not destinations. Adding value to data is something we all know how to do very well, so let the race begin!

Labels: data.gov

Making Contact

I'll start this off by admitting I only have a fuzzy grasp of the underlying technology, but that doesn't stop me from believing there are interesting opportunities to be mined as an increasing number of major social networking sites are making member contact lists available through an API (Application Program Interface), based on a new collaborative standard called Portable Contacts.

Through Portable Contacts, you can build the capability into your online applications that enables your users to seamlessly access their address books stored on Google, MySpace, Plaxo and others. Word on the street is that other major social networking sites will jump on this bandwagon shortly. The operative word here is "seamless," meaning it's easy and convenient - users need not enter additional passwords and you don't have to do any screen scraping on their behalf.

At its lowest level, this is an opportunity to add more convenience to your online products. A user may want to forward a data record directly from your site to a colleague. With this new API, that could be as easy as providing them with a pre-populated pick list of all their colleagues.

But let's think more expansively. Lexis-Nexis has a powerful capability on its martindale.com site that lets you see if anyone in your Linked-In network knows any lawyer in the Martindale database that is also listed on Linked-In. What a powerful way to pre-qualify a lawyer you might want to hire.

Consider also Leadership Directories. Its Leadership Networks product lets you visually map how you and your colleagues connect to the most powerful and influential people in America. This API makes this type of functionality much easier and more powerful.

This initiative is all about seamless connectivity. And as I have said endlessly, data products can't thrive as standalone references. The more they integrate with other applications and embed themselves in business processes and workflow, the more powerful they become. Here's just one more way to accomplish that.

Labels: Leadership Directories, Martindale-Hubbell, Portable Contacts