InfoCommerce

When Words Collide

2010-03-05T11:51:00.000-05:00

There's certainly been a lot of buzz about the lawsuit against popular online business review site Yelp. Most of it is a misreading of the situation. What's going on in this lawsuit will not have any impact on those of us with business reviews of any kind, nor is it a "potential death knell" for online reviews as some are breathlessly claiming. What the Yelp lawsuit is about, pure and simple, is alleged extortion. The company suing Yelp is claiming it was told that if it advertised, negative online reviews would be hidden or removed, and if the company didn't advertise, the negative reviews would remain.

What this lawsuit does highlight, however, is something I have discussed previously: the inherent friction between user reviews and paid advertising. The case of Yelp points up an important but subtle distinction. Usually the issue is how a publisher can add user reviews to paid listings. In the case of Yelp, the question is how a publisher can add paid listings to user reviews. Same difference? I think not.

For the buying guide publisher, the business model is already established: companies pay for an enhanced presence within the buying guide. To add user reviews is not simple: advertisers want a positive environment in which to advertise. Don't expect a paid listing surrounded by negative user reviews to be renewed. Even the most enlightened advertiser will have trouble finding the value in that equation. There are ways to walk a fine line where reviews and advertisers can peacefully co-exist. Capterra was awarded a 2009 Model of Excellence award for, among other things, devising a successful approach to this. But the reason that a middle ground can be carved out is that user reviews are an additional feature for a buyers' guide. They are not the reason the buyers' guide exists.

Contrast that with Yelp. Yelp's success is entirely due to it achieving a critical mass of reviews. Users respond to it and value it because it lets users have their say - the good, the bad, the ugly. Yelp strikes an unabashedly consumerist stance. Without this positioning, which fostered a critical mass of reviews, Yelp would be just another also-ran in the highly competitive local business directory space.

So how does Yelp sell advertising? It can't be that easy. The business with glowing reviews could quite reasonably see no need to advertise. The business with horrid reviews could quite reasonably have no desire to advertise. Yet the moment Yelp starts fiddling or filtering its reviews to accommodate advertisers, it puts its business at risk. Nothing would kill Yelp faster than a general perception (amplified by social media of course) that it had "sold out." Bottom line: the reviews are not an additional feature; they are the product.

I don't see an easy answer to this one. If Yelp wants to succeed selling local business advertising, it's going to need to make compromises that one or more of its constituencies won't like. The strategy and its execution are both critical. And the object lesson is that it does matter which came first: the directory or the reviews.

Unsubscribe is Forever

2010-02-26T14:09:00.000-05:00

I admit to watching the subscriber list to this e-newsletter very closely. I feel good when I see a sudden surge of new subscribers in a given week. I’m disappointed when people unsubscribe, but if it’s not of interest, better to know it.

Things started to get strange about six months ago. Suddenly, I started seeing people unsubscribe who I knew. Even stranger, some of the people had gone out of their way to compliment me on this e-newsletter at various events. Had my topics become too dull? Was my commentary no longer on point? I let the first handful go, but it kept happening. When a few clients showed up on the unsubscribe list, I knew I had to get on the phone.

The story I heard was consistent: they all absolutely wanted to continue receiving this newsletter, and they blamed their clicks on the unsubscribe button on “fat fingers,” “going too fast” and “cleaning up my mailbox.” What became clear to me is a lot of people, reacting no doubt to the avalanche of mail in their inboxes, are aggressively unsubscribing to everything that looks even vaguely promotional, and since they are going for speed and volume, a lot of good stuff gets unsubscribed along with the bad.

I really started thinking about this when several clients began complaining about the same problem: paying customers of theirs clicking unsubscribe to a promotional email, then being lost to them for email purposes forever.

Most of us still utilize this hair-trigger unsubscribe approach: one click and the recipient will never hear from you again by email. That’s a powerful statement that marks you as a responsible online marketer, but the results can badly damage your business. Forever is a long time.

There’s a simple solution that far too few companies utilize: qualify the unsubscribe request. Perhaps the recipient just doesn’t want promotional email from you, but would still be interested in other communications. Perhaps the recipient is very interested in emails about your data products, but not your conferences. The simple point is that by asking, you can often keep the email channel to a customer or prospect open just by asking specifically want they want and don’t want to receive.

One-click unsubscribe sounds great, but it’s a dangerous weapon in the hands of recipients who are, increasingly, just trying to “clean up” their mailboxes. Don’t get swept out with the trash.

Growing a Backbone

2010-02-19T09:49:00.001-05:00

I just downloaded the new LinkedIn Outlook Connector that brings my “LinkedIn Professional Network tight within my Microsoft Outlook Inbox.”

That may not seem like a hugely significant development, but as I have noted many times previously, I think LinkedIn is slowly (and perhaps not even consciously) starting to become a global business backbone directory.

Okay, you’re probably wondering right now what I mean by “backbone directory.” I’ll admit I am not entirely sure myself, even though I know I am right! What I increasingly see is LinkedIn playing a supporting, background role within a growing number of directory products. Typically, those directories let you easily connect a person listed in their directories to your professional network on LinkedIn. It’s an easy way to see how you might be connected to somebody, which is wonderful for salespeople. It also lets you readily peruse an individual’s LinkedIn profile, more times than not a current and detailed resume and an indicator of who they are based on who they know.

Where I see particular opportunities for LinkedIn is in professional services buying guides. What better way to pre-screen a prospective lawyer, accountant or financial advisor than by quickly determining who you might know in common so that you can get a trusted opinion?

But back to my Microsoft Outlook inbox. After installing the LinkedIn connector (you must also install the Outlook Social Connector from Microsoft), I got a glimpse of what the future might hold. When you view an email from someone with whom you are connected in LinkedIn, you see their LinkedIn photo right along the message. There is also a new window that almost instantly organizes all your emails to and from that person along with your prior meetings with that person. You can also quickly isolate email attachments received from that person, making it easy to review documents that person had sent to you. In short, my email inbox has become an entry-level CRM system. I also have easy access to the email addresses of everyone in my LinkedIn network each time I send an email.

Actually, the information being pulled from LinkedIn right now is pretty limited. But start thinking out a bit. There’s no reason I couldn’t filter and prioritize my emails based on whether or not the email sender was in my LinkedIn network. Indeed, what if LinkedIn was to supply me with information on anyone who was in LinkedIn, whether or not the person was in my network? Imagine seeing a photo, company name and title, and information on who you know in common on more, if not most, of your incoming emails? There’s information value, to be sure, but there’s also a “trusted sender” play here. Yes, LinkedIn could be used to validate the integrity if not the identity of email senders. You might even someday filter out email from anyone without a LinkedIn record. Push this out a bit further, and you can see a day where you need a LinkedIn record just to be in business. At that point, LinkedIn’s position as a “backbone directory” is secure, and the revenue opportunities are many and huge.

Contemplating Curation

2010-02-05T13:00:00.000-05:00

Though the buzz around e-books and mobile is deafening right now, I'm hearing another word entering the buzz zone at rocket speed, and it's a word much more relevant to our businesses: curation.

Yes, it's become trendy and mainstream to acknowledge that with so much information so readily available these days, there is real value in plucking out the information that really matters. Malcolm Gladwell, speaking at the recent ALM LegalTech conference, reportedly summed up the problem beautifully, saying "Until search engines can filter as well as they can find, they only add to confusion."

Filtering is something of a geeky way to describe curation. Others may be more comfortable with an older term: editing. Yes, as I have said so many times before, there's not much on the Internet that's really new: it's mostly old ideas sporting flashy new names.

We've spent the last fifteen years on the Internet focused on aggregation. Everyone was trying to build huge pots of content, the most notable examples of this being the search engines. Now it seems that after this frenzy of aggregation, we're starting to stand back and say, "Well that's not very useful." Hence the race to curate.

Another interesting thing to note about this interest in curation is that the experts seem to agree that it's a task for humans. Only a few years ago, we would all have automatically assumed that "there's an app for that," or more precisely, some algorithm or technology that would solve the problem with point-and-click ease. Now, we're starting to appreciate how much nuance is involved.

Of course as data publishers, we have long been practicing a form of curation. We analyze, interpret and add value to information by normalizing it and fielding it. Further, we typically limit ourselves to standardized subsets of information that won't solve every need, but are amazingly powerfully for specific applications. Even better, our selected, normalized and fielded data is easily filtered, meaning that users can easily get to the nuggets most valuable to them. The lesson I take away from this is that it's easier to extract meaning and value from smaller, focused sets of information rather than trying to find small needles in large haystacks.

Love Them Books!

2010-01-22T13:50:00.000-05:00

It's 2010, but client research we recently completed revealed some users still prefer print.
Had we simply discovered the last of the Luddites? It doesn't seem that way. In fact, one of the markets in which we conducted research depends very heavily on online systems to do business. We have said many times that different markets get online religion at very different rates. Even so, to find so many enthusiastic fans of print at this late date was surprising.
Here are some of the reasons we heard about why print still retains its appeal:

The Wall of History - There is apparently a sizable population out there who still collect directories. Over the years, they purchased every edition published and have amassed a wall or shelf of them. This group maintains that it's important to have a "history of the industry" as expressed through print products, and don't want the print version to end. It sounds pretty loopy on the surface, but in fact very few data publishers have addressed the issue of archival information, and in fact their online version isn't satisfactory to those who wish to look back for various reasons.

The Traveling Salesman - It's a classic stereotype but there's truth here as well. When a directory is used for prospecting purposes, we regularly hear that salespeople who live on the road like print because they can throw the directory in a briefcase or in a backseat. We may all live on our iPhones, but it's dangerous to assume everyone else does as well. Related to this, we often hear mobile access being dismissed by users - salespeople in particular - because "you can't really browse." Being able to page through a directory to pick your prospects still means a lot to this group.

The Swiss Army Knife - Forget the purpose for which print directories were designed, there are a surprising number of people who turn them into virtual filing cabinets, appending Post-It notes, marginal notations, memory jogs, names of new personnel and more to the pages. We find this particularly pronounced where the print product has a comb binding or otherwise lies fairly flat on the desk. Sure, many online databases allow users to add private notes, but as print users correctly point out, they tend to be an afterthought: often not convenient, not highly visible, not searchable and not customizable. And the nagging thought of losing it all should the user fail to renew a subscription haunts many of these folks.

The Speed Racer - Don't ever contradict a print directory user who says print is faster to use than online. Right or wrong, they believe it, and passionately. And sometimes they are right. Print directories that get used in large part for quick contact information can in fact be faster and easier to use than elaborate online databases that sport lots of bells and whistles and incredible power, but whose designers forgot that fast contact information look-up was important to the user base.

There's more of course, but these are some common examples. More importantly, they point up that while online is better, online isn't automatically better.

Taking the LEad

2010-01-08T16:06:00.000-05:00

An interesting article in Search Engine Land reported that Google is offering a sales lead form as an option to its AdWords advertisers. A user will be able to click a special link at the bottom of an AdWords advertisement, and a pop-up form will ask for the user's name, phone and some specifics about what they are looking to buy. After submitting the form, the user is promised a call back from the advertiser.

You can see a screen capture of the form here. It's worth a look.

Implications? At first I thought this was another of what I have come to call the Google Daily Disrupter™, a new product or feature from Google that knocks still another industry on its ear. But perhaps not. Consider the following:

1. This lead gen form comes awfully early in the selling process. Can you really generate this high level of interest from a six word advertisement?

2. Success in lead gen depends on the user getting a quick return call from the advertiser. This can happen, but it's not easy to guarantee, so it is questionable how well this will scale, especially given Google's well-known aversion to talking to either its advertisers or users.

3. As the article notes, the call-back process is a bit convoluted, with Google not releasing the prospect's phone number to the advertiser. I can see where this might appeal to the user, but I don't see any great appeal to the advertiser. Further, there is an implicit "we'll protect you from our untrustworthy advertisers" message here.

4. Google will apparently let its all-powerful algorithms, not you the paying advertiser, determine exactly what will display on your lead gen form.

So is Google's new lead gen feature fatally flawed? I am not sure I would go that far. It's a nicely designed form, and the offering is sure to evolve. What may be more important is that over time an offering like this will help to accustom more users to take advantage of sales inquiry forms, which should be good news for B2B buying guide publishers. Lead gen is a Godsend to B2B data publishers, because not only can they charge stiff premiums for every lead delivered, they can also document the power and efficacy of their products to their advertisers, and that's the essential foundation of every successful buying guide.

News Notes

2009-12-11T16:57:00.000-05:00

DATA.GOV GETS A BOOST - In a directive from the Office of Management and Budget, all federal agencies have been ordered to place at least three high-value and not previously available datasets online within the next 45 days, and register them at DATA.GOV. This has the potential to start changing the landscape on public data availability, and it's just the beginning. Read the entire directive here.

GOOGLE TAKES STOCK - Word has it that Google Product Search (formerly Froogle) will soon start offering retail store inventory information, both in online and mobile formats. Find the vendor, find the nearest location, see if the product is in stock - this is powerful stuff. Intriguingly, Google is playing catch-up in the retail inventory space, as a number of fierce competitors roll out similar offerings. And where B2C leads, B2B will surely follow.

THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW - A blogger has unearthed the fascinating fact that the U.S. Department of Justice spends well over $4 million buying public domain court decisions from the federal court system each year, using a creaky online site called PACER. Apparently the federal courts rake in over $50 million annually selling public documents to the public (and those other pesky co-equal branches of government). Don't like it? Tell it to the judge. Of course, being the federal government, there's even more to this story. Since PACER doesn't have comprehensive case coverage, the U.S. Department of Justice also pays legal publishing giant Thomson-West $5 million a year to get access to the rest of those cases.

Steal Smart!

2009-11-20T08:54:00.000-05:00

I've always considered the identity theft protection business to be a bit tawdry. After all, the main players in this area, the big credit bureaus, created the problem in the first place by relentlessly pushing the notion that somehow we are all better off with access to instant credit. This has created a state of affairs where an unscrupulous person, with just a few bits of personal information about you, can become you, at least to the extent of tapping your good name for credit purposes, leaving a trail of wreckage that can destroy your credit and seriously disrupt your life. One would think that credit cards would serve ably to deal with impulse purchases; only in America it seems can credit itself become the impulse purchase.

So how have the credit bureaus dealt with this issue of identity theft, which some reports suggest impacts nearly 10 million Americans each year? Rather than addressing the root cause, they've created lucrative paid services that let consumers monitor their credit files for suspicious activity. Yes, not only has the problem been handed off to consumers to deal with, consumers get to pay for the privilege!

Also, to date, there hasn't been much room for commercial data publishers in this market. After all, the dissemination of credit data is regulated, and virtually all of it is the proprietary content of the big three credit bureaus. But that's not enough to stop a determined data entrepreneur, and what's emerged in this case is a breathtakingly ingenious new product.

A company called Lucid Intelligence, working with another firm called TrustedID, have created a website called StolenIDSearch.com. It's a searchable database containing stolen personal information. Yes, the owners of the website visit hacker sites and have compiled a database of stolen personal information being offered for sale online. Now, you can easily check to see if your personal information may have been purloined. Obviously, if information about you is being offered for sale to criminals and others, you've been compromised and need to take defensive action. The database, by the way, contains stolen information on over 42 million people, 95% of whom are Americans.

This venture may sound a little dodgy, but it's not. It's run by former law enforcement officers who work closely with the police and other investigative agencies and simply want to provide individuals with a proactive read on the safety of their personal information.

The business model is simple: a basic search of the database is free. Full details on your stolen information can be had for a small fee. If you determine you have a problem, TrustedID, the identity protection partner in the service, is right there to offer paid support.

You have to admit it: this one is fiendishly clever, beating the bad guys at their own game.

DC09 Keywords

2009-11-20T08:32:00.000-05:00

A number of keywords came up repeatedly during the course of last week's Data Content09 conference, and they do a good job of identifying what's going on in the booming business of database content. Herewith, in no particular order, are those words:

Embedment. Getting embedded in your customer's workflow has long been a mantra of InfoCommerce Group, and it is now a well understood concept to most data publishers. One of its strongest benefits was exhibited at DC09: an upbeat audience that has weathered this economic downturn remarkably well, with lots of confidence and new ideas coming to market. When you are truly embedded in the business of your customers, you are embedded in their budgets as well, providing a remarkably stable and durable stream of revenues - in good times and bad.

Aggregation. Surprisingly, aggregation is hot again. That's no small statement given that content aggregators seem to be in natural competition with the all-powerful search engines. But this new view of aggregation focuses on well-organized, well-compiled and extremely deep sets of information on a specialized subject. Mix in some high-value, proprietary datasets and you've got something of high value.

Good Enough. As in, "good enough is good enough." We've wrestled with this proposition for the last several years at the conference. Sentiment seems to be turning in favor of this concept again. Yet it remains at odds with the frequent discussions of data quality and accuracy. The reality of both this business and its customers is that perfection is tough. It's tough because we are trying to pin down a moving target. It's also tough because while our customers welcome perfection, they generally won't pay for the cost of producing it.

Curation. The art and science of selecting what you want your audience to see is back with a vengeance, and it's closely related to what's going on in aggregation. The filtering of content is desirable and valuable. Contrast that with trying to simply deliver the most stuff. Information overload is creating a lucrative role for those who can intelligently select and summarize.

Platforms. There was a lot of discussion at DC09 of the power of platforms. At the very least, participate in one, such as SalesForce.com. At the most, develop your own. Allowing others to build applications based on your content, yields enormous benefits in terms of leveraging your own development capabilities (you can't build everything everybody wants, at least not quickly). Leveraged development can in turn spur viral growth.

Humans. It was reassuring to hear regular references to the continuing value of humans in the data compilation and management process. Computers have come a long way in their ability to mix, match, merge and harvest, but speaker after speaker said really good data can't be untouched by human hands.

There are other keywords that came out of DC09, but, surprisingly, one keyword was barely heard at all:

Google. While anything but irrelevant, Google has ceased to be an existential threat to the industry. Data publishers have largely made their peace with Google, and it doesn't dominate their thoughts the way it once did. Google is a tool that can be profitably leveraged, and Google is no longer the enemy. This is likely due in no small part to Google maturing as a business enterprise, and its recent focus on opportunities far less threatening to those of us in the data business.

Summing It Up

2009-10-16T12:01:00.000-04:00

A nicely-executed press release from CreditCards.com hit my desk this morning, highlighting trends in credit card interest rates by category. It's interesting, useful and timely information, and it reminded me again that those of us with good data are crazy not to flaunt it. Periodically running even the most basic totals and averages from your data products can yield a powerful PR tool, and possibly a whole lot more.

If your database is relatively comprehensive in its coverage and is updated fairly frequently, odds are you can generate top-line statistics that can generate real news interest when placed inside a press release. Your statistics become even more powerful when you can show changes from prior periods. Statistics inside of press releases are like catnip to reporters and editors, because they are objective and provable facts. And trend data, especially in vertical B2B markets, remains in short supply, even in this day and age. That makes your statistics newsworthy.

As your top-line statistics start to show up in various media outlets, you accomplish a number of valuable objectives. First, you're identifying yourself to potential customers who don't know about you. Second, you're establishing yourself as an expert authority in your market, enhancing the value of your underlying database. Third, a percentage of those who see your top-line statistics will want the underlying detail, which you can sell to them at a premium price.

We bring this concept up with our clients frequently. Most embrace it, but there is also a surprising amount of push-back. The objections? "It's too complicated," "nobody would be interested," and "we're not sure we could trust the data." For those worried about complexity, you can get into this game with no more than totals and averages. Being able to consistently report change over time is where you primarily provide value - you're not trying to model the global economy. For those who think nobody cares, keep in mind that dependable data, particularly in tight niches and narrow verticals is not all that available. If you summarize it, they will come. And for those who don't feel the statistics they could generate would be trustworthy, what this really means is the underlying database can't be trusted either - a bigger issue to be sure, but one that must be confronted and addressed.

And while I don't want to overstate my case here, every so often we do find a data publisher with unique, current and significant content that is so important it can rise to the level of an index - something powerful enough to influence stock prices and that both economists and hedge funds incorporate into their forecasting models. These opportunities don't come along often, but when they do, they're big.

Put it in perspective, and you see that these industry statistics provide even more proof that "all roads lead to data," coincidentally the theme of this year's Data Content Conference, a scant 11 days away. And if you are intrigued about CreditCards.com, you'll certainly want to hear Elisabeth DeMarse, CEO of CreditCards.com, one of the conference's two special guest speakers this year.

Fast Forward to the Past

2009-10-09T12:51:00.000-04:00

The more I watch the evolution of new (online) media, the more convinced I become that it's simply the rules of old (print) media re-invented by people who never spent any time in the old media business. As just one example of this, consider the current and heated attention being paid to call tracking. Call tracking?

Yes, the "most measurable medium" appears to be coming to grips with the fact that people continue to use the telephone to transact business, so counting click-throughs doesn't tell the whole story in terms of advertising performance. Hence, the sudden interest in what used to be called "key phone" programs. Advertisers are issued dedicated phone numbers to run in their online advertising, allowing them to measure the number of calls generated by their online ads. It's a simple, powerful concept, but it's hardly new.

I got my first look at key phone programs at Thomas Publishing in the early 1980's. At that time, Thomas routinely offered to pay for a dedicated phone number any time a prospective advertiser expressed doubt about the value of advertising with Thomas. It was a powerful sales tool for the Thomas salesperson, effectively saying to prospects "let us put our money where our mouth is." Few prospects turned them down. When renewal time came around and the salesperson heard the all-too-common objection "I didn't get any calls," the Thomas salesperson would pull out the telephone company records for the dedicated phone number. Faced with concrete proof of performance, the advertiser almost always shifted from whether to renew to the size of his renewal program.

Key phone programs were incredibly powerful. With over 1,000 key phones in use at one point, Thomas Publishing even talked Columbia University into doing a study of them. One particularly stunning result: key phone numbers would continue to generate significant numbers of calls, sometimes for years after the advertisements associated with the phone numbers stopped appearing.

So why all the heat around call tracking? It seems that some online pundits are proclaiming it a bad move for advertisers because if advertisers don't consistently use the same phone number, they won't be correctly captured by automated harvesting software, which apparently relies heavily on matching records based on telephone numbers. If true, this sounds like one more place where new media can learn a lot from old media, which has long been successfully matching records even when there are -- gasp -- no phone numbers present at all!

View-Through and You

2009-10-02T10:43:00.000-04:00

In a recently released update to its earlier study called "Natural Born Clickers," the web traffic research firm comScore presents an eye-popping indictment of online display ad click-throughs.

Using click-through rates as an advertising performance metric has frustrated B2B publishers for years. B2B audiences tend to be small by online standards. This, of course, is by design, since B2B publishers present highly specialized content targeted at specific, high-value audiences. Inherently, then, B2B publishers will never look that impressive when measured by click-through rates, but advertisers and their agencies want to see big results from their advertising investment. And why the focus on click-through rates as a performance metric? In the candid words of one agency professional, because "clicks are easy to understand and easy to measure."

Keeping in mind that this comScore study is B2C research, one key finding speaks volumes: only 8% of Internet users account for 85% of all click-throughs. And who are these heavy clickers? It's a generally younger and less affluent crowd, suggesting that the clicks-throughs that advertisers covet may not even represent good prospects.

Most significantly, comScore was able to document that online display advertising provides concrete branding value. Site visitors who see a display ad impression are demonstrably more likely to visit the advertisers' website and search on an advertisers' trademarks within a month of being exposed to an online display ad from the advertiser.
That's why there is a growing movement out there to shift measurement from "click-through" to "view-through." In English, "view-through" roughly translates to "ad impressions." Yes, it's been a long, rough, painful ride, but it does seem we've come full circle: display advertising against a targeted, engaged audience delivers real value to advertisers. Who knew?

See and You Shall Find

2009-09-25T12:39:00.000-04:00

I've spent some time playing with Microsoft's new visual search feature in Bing. One thing I think everyone agrees with is that it is cool. You can take a look for yourself at http://www.bing.com/visualsearch.

Of course, cool by itself doesn't pay the bills, so what I've been pondering is whether visual search is a step forward in providing access to structured content, or whether it's nothing more than a gimmick. Where do I come out? I'm still not sure.

Visual search is engaging and immersive. It quickly reminds you of the interface for the enormously popular iPhone. In this regard, visual search may be where things are headed, particularly because it is so intuitive. At the same time, I wonder if visual search can add all that much to B2B data products. The vast majority of business databases are focused on some combination of people, products and companies, and visual representation brings little added value. Would pictures of office buildings help you get to information on a particular company more quickly? I doubt it. Would headshots of CEO's help you build a targeted list of prospects? Not really. And while products sound more promising, I'm not sure, for example, that I could sufficiently differentiate different types of industrial lasers from pictures in order to narrow my search. All this said, what amazing pizzazz visual search could add to a user interface and sales presentation!

Of course visual search works powerfully for some categories such as celebrities, animals, politicians and travel. There are probably numerous other applications too. In short, this is new stuff, and everyone (including Microsoft) is still trying to determine what makes sense. The underlying technology, built on Microsoft Silverlight (reportedly already installed on nearly 75% of all Windows machines), is impressive. Watch in particular how the search box changes as you put your mouse over different images. Let your mind wander as you note that search results are geolocation-aware. Note the ability to sort the images in a variety of ways. Let's also note that Microsoft is licensing the underlying content for most of these search sets from third-party data providers.
This is impressive technology, and it's a whole new way to think about and look at search. Take a look for yourself and start thinking outside the (search) box!

Categorical Denial

2009-09-18T14:18:00.002-04:00

Just recently, industry visionary Esther Dyson published an open letter to Yahoo suggesting a new strategic direction. The article, entitled "Release 0.9: What Should Yahoo! Do?" offers two separate ideas, but it's the first one that caught my eye.

Dyson suggests that Yahoo can truly distinguish itself from Google by returning to its roots and becoming a directory again. In this context, Dyson means classifying websites against a taxonomy. She likens a Google search to using a searchlight in a darkened room. It highlights specific things, but you have no idea what you're not seeing. A classification system for websites removes this constraint by grouping similar websites together, through some human or automated effort.

This immediately brought back memories of a 1996 article in Wired magazine, that discussed Yahoo's categorization activities in fascinating detail. Although Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang admitted that Yahoo was already falling behind in the job of categorizing the web (imagine a staff of 20 indexers trying to categorize every website), both Yang and the article's author seemed to agree the real challenge lay in creating an ontology - a classification scheme for all human knowledge. Ultimately, Yahoo abandoned its focus on site classification in favor of an automated keyword index. Another company (starts with "G") came along with an indexing approach that produced more relevant search results, and the rest is history.

There are two important insights here for data publishers:

First, while many data publishers view Google as an overwhelming and unstoppable competitor, its one-size-fits-all offering is both its great strength and weakness. You search on Google's terms and while it delivers a lot of value quickly, reliably and free, you never know what you are not seeing. There continues to be significant opportunity for those who can refine what Google does by improving on discoverability, by expediting the research process, by returning more relevant results in a more convenient format, and by coupling content with tools. And for most of us, it's best not to confront Google broadly; better to pick a specific niche and mine it deeper and better.

Second, while doing away with human indexers in favor of automated keyword indexing, Yahoo was able to vastly expand the number of websites it indexed, but ultimately, this high level of automation left it exposed to competitors with better technology. Had Yahoo continued to manually categorize websites (perhaps coupled with some level of automation and maybe a user-generated assist of some sort), I believe that today it would be an important alternative to Google, not an also-ran to Google. Further, investment in people to categorize websites, while expensive, would have yielded not just significant competitive differentiation, but also significant competitive defense.This game's not over; it's just beginning. And those who are smart about how to gather and organize information are on the winning team.

Model of Excellence Awards

We are pleased to announce that
Panjiva Inc.is a finalist for an InfoCommerce2009 Model of Excellence award.

Review Panjiva's Model of Excellence profile here Hear Panjiva CEO Josh Green at DataContent 09 DataContent 09: All Roads Lead to Data. Full program here.

What You Design is What You Get

2009-09-18T14:18:00.001-04:00

I just finished looking through a fascinating presentation from online design guru Joshua Porter. While the presentation is focused on social media sites, I think there are some good and useful lessons in here for data publishers as well.

Joshua kicks off the presentation with a challenging comment: the online behavior you are seeing is the online behavior you designed for (intentional or not). Stated another way, your results can't be better than the tools you use to achieve those results. It's hard enough to get visitor sign-ups, even for free products and services, so make sure you're not erecting inadvertent hurdles that will encourage people not to sign-up. When I talk to publishers who are having trouble getting sign-ups for free trials, for example, there is usually an implicit "What's wrong with people?" hiding in the conversation. Come at the problem this way, and you're not likely to ask the more productive question "Am I doing everything I can on my site to encourage sign-ups?"

And just how do you optimize your site to maximize sign-ups? Joshua's presentation provides some great, concrete ideas:

- Recognize that there are usually multiple user mindsets, and make sure your site provides for them -- one registration page does not necessarily fit all.

- Put some of the most length and onerous parts of your sign-up process at the back-end, not the front. In other words, get them online fast and collect a lot of your sign-up information later.

- Do A/B tests of the copy on your site. In many respects, copy matters more now than ever, right down to the buttons that users click.

- The real works starts after the sign-up. True user engagement just doesn't happen.
There's lots more in this presentation, and it's well worth taking the time to spin through it. As with everything, the devil is in the details.

The Need for Speed

2009-09-18T14:16:00.000-04:00

Kudos to Dave Jung of the always-interesting B2Blog.com for bringing up a topic that might seem tired and even quaint in this broadband era: optimizing your site for fast loading.

We live in a world of nanosecond attention spans. That means the speed with which your web pages (particularly your home page) load can mean the difference between a visit or a bounce. As web page design tools get more and more sophisticated, so too do web sites, often with a corresponding decrease in load time. Yes, I admit there is value in having an attractive, engaging site, but if that result comes at the cost of speed, you're probably shooting yourself in the foot. And please keep in mind I am talking about basic web pages here, not the self-indulgent Flash monstrosities that take 30 seconds to load in order to deliver another 30 seconds of information-free graphics and sound. And since I mentioned sound, I'd also like to suggest that you carefully consider the value of loud music and audio sales pitches on a B2B site, particularly on a home page. B2B sites are often accessed in open spaces and during meetings. What are the trade-offs of potentially embarrassing your visitors the moment they hit your site?

I also see issues with ad networks that serve ads from their own servers. I've had more than a few home pages essentially freeze on me as the home page desperately tries to download a display ad from an ad network server. Advertising is supposed to engage users, not frustrate them.

In short, rapidly increasing download speeds for more users hasn't actually erased all the issues relating to speed, because too many publishers have now constructed such elaborate sites they that have negated the value of all this additional download speed. Yes, in an era of seemingly "no limits," there are still some lines that should not be crossed.

The solution? First and foremost, make sure you are logging into your own site regularly - and not just from your office, where you might not get a true picture of what the rest of the world is experiencing. Also, Dave helpfully suggested two tools: Page Speed from Google and YSlow from Yahoo that both test site download speed and suggest ways to improve it.

Roadmap to Success

2009-08-14T10:28:00.000-04:00

It's now almost de rigueur for data publishers to offer some sort of mapping option within their online products. Nine times out of ten, this is a simple link to Google Maps based on the street address of the company whose listing information is being viewed. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, provided that publishers don't fool themselves about how much added value this provides to users, which is ... not much. At best, you're saving the user a few clicks. That's because basic street maps, like so many things online, are widely available for free.

But there is more to mapping than basic street maps, and there are real opportunities for data publishers to take their mapping capabilities beyond just an afterthought. What got me thinking about this was the announcement by MapQuest of a new mapping product complete with an API to make it easy to integrate into your own data product. What is offered in this premium product is several location-based datasets. Suddenly, mapping is more than where you are. It's now what's around you.Consider the possibilities. With this MapQuest product, you can overlay Census demographics, Congressional district boundaries, the name, SIC and location of over 13 million businesses, location of every U.S. public school, areas of traffic congestion and accidents, and a whole lot more. While every data product serves a different market and user need, I think the concept is clear: It's becoming a lot easier to integrate your data with third party data to develop very powerful and very valuable mapping applications. Don't underestimate the power of data visualization to set your data product apart.

Of course, the next logical step is then to allow your users to upload their own data, so their stores, sales offices, factories or whatever can be plotted alongside your data, as well as third party data. There are lots of different angles here, but they all start with a firm understanding of what kinds of data and applications your customers need.

Finally, because one of the beauties of the data business is that it's always a two-way street, you might want to consider whether your own location-based data might be something that MapQuest might want to license from you.

Right now, sophisticated mapping applications are the road less traveled by most data publishers, but for many, now's the time to chart a course to greater profits.

Data Recovery

2009-08-07T10:09:00.000-04:00

You probably know about the big initiative in Washington to put more government data online, more quickly and more accessibly, in order to promote government transparency. A much-touted early pilot for this new initiative is Recovery.gov, designed to provide total transparency on the spending of $787 billion in federal stimulus money.

I'll admit right away that the Recovery.gov website is head-and-shoulders above the other federal agency websites I have used, both in terms of interface, navigation and ease-of-use. The problem with Recovery.gov, however, is that according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, it is woefully behind in reporting contract awards.

If you find it frustrating that you can't get access to these contract awards, don't be. You simply need to go to a different site, Recovery.org. This site offers vastly more contract awards data under the stimulus program, but it's not a government website. In fact, it's operated by 2008 InfoCommerce Model of Excellence award winner Onvia.

Onvia, which reports contract awards at the federal, state and local levels, has spent years developing data feeds from government agencies, supplemented by its own compilation efforts. It's also developed sophisticated software to normalize and process all these disparate data feeds. Result: Onvia can post contract award data faster than the U.S. Government, which is writing all the checks.Onvia isn't entirely selfless in its launch of Recovery, org, which is free to use. The site also shows users how much additional contract information Onvia can make available on a paid subscription basis. In short, Recovery.org is a clever and powerful sales promotion tool.

Is the government committed to improving its Recovery.gov site? You bet. In fact, it's just let an $18 million contract to that end. Did this contract end up in the hands of Onvia, which not only has demonstrated its skills, but controls high-value data feeds to speed receipt of contract data? What do you think? According to eWeek.com, the contract went to a company called Smartronix, which is going to build all this functionality from scratch. A quick peek at the company's own website tells me it fairly earns the moniker "Beltway bandit," with its long list of government clients, and no evidence it has ever built a B2B website before, much less one designed primarily for consumer use.

Sometimes transparency just confirms what you could have just guessed.

Top-Level Domainia

2009-07-31T10:21:00.000-04:00

Until recently, ICANN, the body charged with administering the domain naming system, has been very stingy about authorizing new top-level domains (e.g. .com, .net, .biz). Now, however, it's apparently open season. Anyone with $185,000 can have a top-level domain of their own.

Implications? Well first, it's a bit more hassle, confusion and complexity for those of us whose business involves gathering and maintaining this information. Second, it's a potential area of opportunity. Consider a legal publisher that buys the top-level domain ".law" and offers it to its advertisers, or hosts websites for law firms listed in its database. This could be an exciting marketing gambit.

But more profoundly, this move marks increasing erosion in one of the core uses of many directory products: providing basic company contact information. Think about it: you don't need a directory (or a search engine for that matter) to find the website for Microsoft, because the odds are very good that if you type the name of any big company followed by ".com," you'll easily get to that company's website. Should Microsoft acquire the ".microsoft" top-level domain, it will likely get even easier. Many web pundits believe that in the near future, you'll simply type "Microsoft" into your browser, and if Microsoft owns the corresponding top-level domain, you'll go right to it site.

The lesson here, which I've stated many times before, is that basic company contact information has become a commodity, and this new development even further erodes its value. If you think the $185,000 will keep a lid on things, don't forget innovative services like Telnic* that is vying to become a central company phone book on the web. Still not convinced? Then go over to Jigsaw (2005 Model of Excellence winner), which offers its database of 2.6 million company records free for the downloading.

The bottom line is that if "industry phone directory" is a part of the value proposition of your data product, it's well past time to start moving it up the value chain.

*Telnic is a 2009 Model of Excellence finalist, and its CTO, Henri Asseily, will explain how the company is executing on its vision at this year's InfoCommerce Data Content09 conference.

Model of Excellence Awards

We are pleased to announce that Netprospex Inc. is a finalist for an InfoCommerce 2009 Model of Excellence awards.

Review the Netprospex Model of Excellence profile here

Hear Netprospex Founder & CEO Gary Halliwell at DataContent 09
DataContent 09: All Roads Lead to Data. Full program here.

A Database from Wal-Mart

2009-07-17T15:45:00.001-04:00

Giant retailer Wal-Mart, as part of a number of bold moves in recent years to improve its image as a good corporate citizen, has just announced that it is now going to display eco-ratings on the products it sells. There's only one small catch, of course: such ratings do not currently exist. Wal-Mart, however, has the answer: it is going to insist that its suppliers participate in this initiative, with Wal-Mart funding the development effort.

Wal-Mart sees this as a three-step process: first, collect data from its suppliers that will be input into a central database. The second step is to collaborate with universities and other groups to work through the various weights to be assigned to each data element. The third step will be to translate the weighted data into a single "sustainability index number," that will essentially reflect how green a product is in terms of how it is manufactured, how it is distributed, and the extent to which it can be recycled.

But just because Wal-Mart is behind this initiative, it's not a closed system. Wal-Mart has publicly stated that it wants to develop a universal sustainability index for all products, and it wants other companies to participate. The product database, as we understand it, will be publicly accessible both to promote transparency, and to spur ancillary uses of the information.

This is a huge initiative, and one that many others have looked at, although generally on a less ambitious scale. Offering meaningful sustainability ratings is not only a worthwhile business, it can be a lucrative business as well. The key, of course, is getting market acceptance and critical mass. That where it helps to have the clout of Wal-Mart, with sales equating to 2% of GDP, and a proven willingness to use supplier mandates to enforce participation.

This is a project to watch as it takes shape over the next few years. Data publishers may want to start carrying sustainability index data along with product information (again, our understanding is that Wal-Mart will make this information publicly available). There may also be some interesting spin-off opportunities in crunching and re-packaging the underlying dataset.

Will Wal-Mart succeed? There's certainly no guarantee, but nothing populates a database faster than a major customer asking its vendors to provide them with some information.

-- @infocommerce

An Honest Opinion

2009-07-17T15:41:00.000-04:00

In 2005, we gave an InfoCommerce Model of Excellence award to a company called ValueStar. We described it as a "for-profit Better Business Bureau," which doesn't capture all the nuances of the service, but gives you the general idea.

What stood out to us at the time was that while it relied heavily on user ratings, ValueStar went to extreme lengths to assure those that were rating a vendor had actually done business with the vendor. It seemed like overkill at the time, but with so many sites now drowning in user-supplied ratings (many of which are of suspect origin as merchants realize the power of their reviews), ValueStar's concept of validating user input looks prescient.

Last year, I wrote about another company, Tablet Hotels, which had announced it was adding user reviews. No news there, but Tablet Hotels upped the ante in the travel category by limiting reviews to those it could confirm had actually stayed at the hotel they were reviewing. While Tablet Hotels didn't publish the names of those who submitted reviews, it required that users identify themselves when posting their reviews. That might seem crazy to those publishers seeking to build a large volume of review on their sites, but I argued that Tablet Hotels was actually quite clever, because its approach removed all credibility issues while forcing users to take responsibility for their words by asking them to identify themselves.

Just yesterday, I was speaking with Mike Ortner of Capterra, an online buying guide for software. Capterra has gone where few publishers dare to tread: letting its users provide software reviews, including the products of its advertisers.

The process Capterra has devised is highly controlled. Users are required to identify themselves when providing a review, and their company names and job titles (but not their names) are published along with the review. It has purposely built a lengthy review submission form, the better to weed out those who are not serious and engaged. Capterra advertisers are allowed to preview all reviews of their products before they go live, and can challenge factual inaccuracies or reviews from users who aren't customers. There's much more to what Capterra is doing in the area of reviews, but my point here is a basic one: while all publishers are eager to have as many user reviews as possible on their sites, smart publishers are realizing that quantity at the expense of quality is a mistake. Reviews that can be trusted, submitted by responsible parties who are willing to identify themselves, have much more impact and value - even to advertisers, the group you would think would be least interested in seeing unvarnished reviews alongside their advertising programs.

Model of Excellence Awards

We are pleased to announce that Unigo LLC is a finalist for an InfoCommerce 2009 Model of Excellence awards.
Review Unigo's Model of Excellence profile here

Hear Unigo Founder & CEO Jordan Goldman at DataContent 09
DataContent 09: All Roads Lead to Data. Full program here.

Getting the Message

2009-06-26T12:43:00.000-04:00

What do email, instant messaging, RSS (generally associated with blogs), social media (I am thinking in particular about such platforms as Linked-In and FaceBook) and Twitter have in common? They are all messaging channels. And each one grew rapidly in popularity after the then-dominant messaging channel became over-used, and thus less effective, particularly for marketers.

Email was the first of these messaging channels. Its low cost, ease of use and lack of rules turned out to be a two-edged sword, spurring rapid adoption, while attracting a tidal wave of marketers, spammers and others whose mail volume soon swamped one-to-one email communications. Users fought back with aggressive spam filters, usage conventions and even legislation, largely taming the channel and adding lots of marketing constraints.Blogging then went supernova for a while, in part because one could attract an audience at low cost, but more importantly I would argue, because it was closely tied to RSS. The great hidden value of RSS was that it bypassed spam filters and landed messages directly on the users' desktop.

Next up: social networking platforms, such as Linked-In with its Linked-In groups, which created privileged communications channels that are still growing in popularity. And now there is Twitter, which is also growing rapidly.

It seems that once a popular messaging channel becomes too clogged with extraneous messages, a new message channel emerges. Once it generates spectacular rates of adoption, marketers, spammers and others seeking to monetize the channel pile on, creating noise, clutter and a commercial tone that many users reject. This sets the stage for yet another new messaging channel to emerge.

The implication for publishers? They should jump on these new messaging channels as quickly and early as possible, which is when they yield maximum benefit. At the same time, publishers need to be cognizant that it's risky to develop dependence on these channels because their marketing half-life will become increasingly short. The messaging channels that prove durable will be the ones that impose rules and technological barriers that limit their value for marketing purposes. The ones with the fewest restrictions are likely to flame-out relatively quickly.The bad news and the good news in all of this remain the same: the message remains more valuable than the medium, and there is no durable short-cut to building an online audience.

The Best Never Rest
Model of Excellence Award Winner
iJet Intelligent Risk Systems
to Speak at DataContent 09

A 2004 InfoCommerce Model of Excellence Award Winner, iJet has tranformed itself several times to take advantage of new opportunities and emerging business needs, while never losing sight of its core competencies and value proposition.

iJet CTO Greg Meyer will be on the highly popular "Excellence Revisited" panel at DataContent 09 where he'll talk candidly about what iJet has learned about what it takes to succeed in the business of business information, hard-earned lessons you can take to the bank!

DataContent 09: All Roads Lead to Data. Full program here.

Risky Business

2009-06-19T10:10:00.001-04:00

It’s hardly newsworthy that the Internet has been enormously disruptive to both well established businesses and business models. It’s also not news that the Internet enables disintermediation by making it easier to both buy direct and do-it-yourself. We’ve also seen that the Internet has enabled “electronic commons” through social networking and user-generated content.

What happens when you combine all these combustible characteristics in one package and apply them to our global financial crisis? You get start-ups like freerisk.org.

Freerisk wants to challenge, if not replace, the major credit ratings agencies (e.g. Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s and Fitch) by letting users build and run their own financial risk models. As I understand the plan (and the venture is still very much a work in progress), Freerisk will aggregate public company financial data and provide an interface that lets users pull the data into their own risk models with the hope they will publish their findings on the Freerisk site.

Freerisk is explicitly gunning for the major rating agencies. It’s unlikely they’ll make a short-term dent in the revenues of the big three players, each of which operates with governmental imprimatur, but the risk is that Freerisk over time calls the credibility of these entities into question, a potentially more damaging outcome, and one not outside the realm of possibility. Ratings agencies aren’t the most popular folks these days, and if this young upstart embarrasses them with a series of prescient calls, it could be enough to topple this highly profitable oligarchy.

The lesson for content providers: there’s no room for complacency. New competitors spring out of nowhere, and the web provides them with near-equal footing with you. Further, the economics of the web not only reduce barriers to entry, but they enable even failing businesses to hang in for extended periods of time, causing you pain all the while. Indeed, it’s not unusual for a website to launch with no revenue model (some plan to figure one out down the road; some don’t ever intend to generate revenue).

The solution? The best offense is a good defense. You can’t anticipate these new competitors, and you can’t (and generally shouldn’t try to) fight them. All you can do is stay close to your customers, deeply understand their needs, give them tools that they come to depend on to operate their businesses, and oh yes … always sleep with one eye open.

Searching for Quality

2009-06-12T10:44:00.000-04:00

I'm in research mode for a client project right now, and that's all it takes to re-introduce me to the sorry state of site search - the capability a publisher provides for users to search just within the publisher's own site. The only conclusion I can draw from what I see is that publishers view site search as an expense to be minimized, and programmers view it as not worthy of their time and talent.

That's a big mistake.

Visitors to your site who use your site search capability are engaged users. They're investing time to probe deeper into your site because you've convinced them you are relevant to their interests and needs. These are prime visitors who you can monetize through advertising or a la carte sales of content. These are also visitors who'll likely come back again if you provide a rich and rewarding experience. Yet despite all this upside, site search is typically an afterthought. Here's my list of top offenses:

- Limiting yourself to low-cost or free site search software without regard to the kind of experience it delivers to the users of your site.
- Failing to integrate site search results into the site's style sheet and theme (usually because the designer is long gone before site search is implemented). Besides the jarring visual disconnect to those searching your site, your site screams "we don't care" which brings the value of your content into question.
- Providing only global site search capabilities. If your site contains different types of content, let users limit their searches. If I am on a newspaper site searching for a restaurant review, I don't want to wade through classified ads, news stories and obituaries in my search results.
- Not using content tags for searching. Most publishers are tagging all their content inside powerful content management systems to improve the front-end site experience, but I see little evidence that all these powerful CMS capabilities are being used to improve the back-end (i.e. site search) experience.
- No power searching capabilities. There's nothing more frustrating than reviewing results in order of relevance when date order is what you really need. Just a few simple options like this can radically upgrade the site search experience.
- No dates. A personal pet peeve of mine, there's nothing more frustrating than finding an absolutely on-target article through a site search and having absolutely no idea what month, year or even decade it was written, immediately rendering it worthless.

When you also consider that because many publishers hold their archives in database form meaning they are not typically visible to the big general search engines, site search gives publishers one shot at unlocking the value of this content. Instead, most are shooting themselves in the foot.

Fill 'er Up

2009-06-05T11:56:00.000-04:00

A new launch by Picaphone, which aims to create the first international phone directory, caught my eye this week so I decided to check out www.picaphone.com.

After dozens of searches for all types of companies, big and small all yielded no results, I was pushed to an inexorable conclusion: this database nothing in it.

Back to the press release again and I noticed the statement, "The success of this ambitious project depends on the cooperation of web surfers all over the world." Yes, it's all about user-generated content, but with the remarkable goal of trying to collect every telephone directory listing in the world. Imagine how many listings would have to be contributed (and maintained) for this to become a site worthy enough for users to return to repeatedly.

I certainly have no beef with this company's audacious business objective. My point is that the window is rapidly closing for online data ventures that set up shop with a user interface and back-end database and then say to the world, "fill 'er up." Why? Very simply, the novelty factor is gone. That's why last year's Data Content Conference featured companies such as Snooth and BrownBook. Both these companies see user-generated content as integral to their success, but both started out supplying an initial dataset that delivered value while encouraging users to augment this information. With this approach, these companies deliver value to users immediately, rather than hoping magic will happen and users will do a credible (and rapid) job building out the database from scratch. I'd go so far as to argue that the bigger the scope of a user-generated database product, the more important to provide an initial dataset.

But what about companies like Jigsaw and Linked-In you may properly ask. These two very successful databases were built entirely from user-generated content. To this I would respond that these companies caught the wave of early excitement around user-generated content, so they had great timing going for them. I'd also argue that these databases, while they certainly became more valuable as they got bigger, were still able to deliver value to users while quite small. Think about it: both Jigsaw and Linked-In could deliver some value to users with 50,000 names; a database claiming to be a global telephone directory cannot.User-generated content certainly isn't dying; in fact where user-generated content augments a publisher's existing database it is very much alive and well. User-generated data products where the database starts completely empty are also lacking much promise.