Angie's List Gets More Financing
Angie's List, a home improvement and contractor online listings and review service, continues to gain momentum from investors. The company this week announced it has received $18 million in venture debt from Lighthouse Capital Partners. This follows the $35 million Battery Ventures invested for a minority stake in Angie's List back in April. Other investors include Aquent and BV Capital.
Angie's List expanded its offerings in March from covering home-focused companies, such as plumbers, to health care providers. The company plans to expand those offerings on an international scale as well.
Thousands of consumers rate and review local service providers in more than 400 different categories on Angie's List. The company boasts more than 750,000 users in 125 major U.S. cities.
This latest round of financing just shows what a strong business model Angie's List has. Combining user-generated content with a traditional search functionality has proven to be a very successful combination. Before the web, referrals were an important part of the service provider selection process, so it's not a surprise that Angie's List's ratings and reviews are so well received. And as more consumers become comfortable with the entire concept of user-generated content, the number of reviews available for others to view will likely grow at a rapid pace.
It's exciting to know that Angie's List plans to grow internationally, but hopefully the company will expand further in the U.S. as well.
Jigsaw Goes Mobile with SkyData Partnership
Business information provider Jigsaw and SkyData Systems, a first person-centric business mobile application provider, have formed a partnership that will equip smart phone users with mobile access to Jigsaw's directory of more than 1.5 million company contacts via a SkyData application. As a result, SkyData application users can seamlessly connect with Jigsaw's company information listings by clicking from emails, phone calls and text messages or calendar events from their mobile devices.
The integration of the Jigsaw data into SkyData's mobile service is just the first phase of the partnership between the two companies. They plan to also enable users to purchase and submit business contact information using Jigsaw's community-contributed model directly from SkyData.
It's certainly not surprising that Jigsaw has gone mobile with this alliance. More and more people rely on their phones as complete information sources and it's pretty safe to assume that many businesspeople will want to use their phone to access business information, such as the content that Jigsaw provides. Making Jigsaw available in this format was a smart move for the company as data is not nearly as valuable as actionable data. Making its data accessible whenever and wherever users need it will only help to reinforce their need for Jigsaw's service, and will probably help increase both customer loyalty and retention.
At the same time, SkyData also recognizes the need for not just mobile access to information, but information that is accurate. By partnering with an organization like Jigsaw, it will be able to provide that quality data by a brand name that is likely already familiar to many of its customers.
ZANA Network Partners with Kompass
ZANA Network, a business-to-business online marketplace for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has partnered with business information provider Kompass in a move that will provide ZANA Network members access to Kompass import and export directory.
When they register with ZANA (http://www.zananetwork.com/), companies can purchase leads from the Kompass database of more than 2.4 million global companies at a 10 percent discount off the regular subscriber cost. Members can access the Kompass content through ZANA's homepage.
The Kompass database is a prospecting tool for buyers and sellers who want to reach potential customers, resellers and distributors. Users can conduct advanced searches and obtain search results through more than 25 search criteria and 57,000 product and service categories. Subscribers can also access company profiles, PDFs of all listed companies, as well as financial data. Other options include an email messaging system to contact companies, the ability to select lists, and language selection. Subscribers can also utilize geographical selection (covering a country, region or the globe) and automatic access via IP addresses.
This partnership is certainly a smart move for ZANA Network. It truly enables the company to offer a much more robust service to its customers. The breadth of Kompass' database isn't something ZANA could have likely created on its own. So, in this case, a partnership to gain access to this data was the right thing to do. ZANA members will definitely benefit from this additional content and Kompass gains additional exposure in the process, which could help it gain new customers for its other offerings. Such partnerships can be very effective marketing tools for companies such as Kompass.
Searching for Insight
I am just now reading a new book called Click by Bill Tancer, who is head of research at web analytics company Hitwise. The subtitle of the book, "What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters," gives you a good sense of what the book is about. The underlying premise: that people's online search patterns are not only telling, but are a far more accurate way to get at people's real interests and activities than conventional surveys.
The book and its premise build on a termed coined by John Battelle way back in 2003 called "the database of intentions." Batelle defines it as:
The aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result. It lives in many places, but three or four places in particular hold a massive amount of this data (ie MSN, Google, and Yahoo). This information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind - a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends.
As someone who has spent more time examining server log files than I care to admit, I know first-hand the power of this concept. It is possible to glean from search activity what users, individually and in the aggregate, are thinking and doing. That's not as scary as it might sound, because online searching is still largely anonymous, and search patterns are often more useful in aggregate.
We're going to see a lot more activity around competitive intelligence built on analysis of search activity, and it's not too early to think about your own site traffic as a source of such intelligence. Consider as just one example Kelly Blue Book, which in a presentation at the 2006 InfoCommerce Conference detailed how it had built a substantial subscription business selling to auto manufacturers data on how many consumers had looked at what car models in what geographies.
And if you're interested in a quick demonstration of the power of "search intelligence," pay close attention to the Google search box. Depending on the search term you enter, you'll see not only similar search terms entered by others, but a count of the number of times each search term was entered. Want to assess a market? Fine-tune your paid search program? See how many people are querying a competitor's website? It's all there for you, fast, free and at your fingertips.
As the example above shows, you don't have to search at all for these search insights.
Labels: bill tancer, database of intentions, kelly blue book
Chemical Information Services Launches New Tool
Chemical Information Services has released the ChemInfo MarketPlace, a new addition to its slate of chemical sourcing tools. It is a web-based exchange service that is targeted to the buyers and sellers in the pharmaceutical, biotech and custom chemical manufacturing industries to help with their procurement and sales functions. Chemical Information Services partnered with Chemfinet Services, a web-based sourcing platform, to launch this new tool.
To use ChemInfo MarketPlace, buyers post RFQs (request for quotes) on the site for molecules they need, while sellers submit bids for the chemicals they make or provide. Buyers are able to find what they need quickly, saving time and search costs. Sellers have access to better opportunities and can save sales and marketing dollars in the process.
This was a smart idea by Chemical Information Services since it provides one more way in which customers can access its information. This could certainly help the company reach a new set of customers, while making that access even easier for current customers. In addition, the company has increased its value to customers by providing this venue that equally serves the needs of both buyers and sellers by helping both more effectively reach their target audiences. Chemical Information Services expects this solution to help buyers and sellers save time and money. If it can accomplish that, this will be a big winner for the company.