You can add Google Street View to your enhanced listing in Brownbook to show users exactly where your business is located, and Brownbook is the first business directory to provide this facility.

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An interesting quote that i received by email today:

“The successful companies in the local space will have organic traffic, unique distribution, self-service products, direct access to merchant budgets and low-cost burn rates, she said. Meanwhile, companies that overly rely on search engine marketing, have high sales costs and churn rates, and require major rounds of funding will struggle.”

I’ve omitted the source to protect the innocent

Kelsey Group (Kelsey Group is the leading provider of strategic research and analysis, data and competitive metrics on Yellow Pages, electronic directories, local search, SMB advertising and local media) run a group on

Linked In where I saw the following question today:
What is the long term life expectancy of the print Yellow Pages. Please state your opinion in years and facts that promted you to come up with that conclusion.
So I felt compelled to respond:

Two thoughts for the group:

1. I use Twitter (http://twitter.com/marc_lyne) and Tweet Beep (http://tweetbeep.com/) to hear all the comments that are made about Yellow Pages. I would say that 95% of the comments are about the wastage they feel they are creating by taking the 4 thick directories that they have dropped on their door step each year and putting them straight in the bin. Irrespective of the fact the directory may be printed on recycled paper, they want to opt out and not receive them at all. The caveat on this comment being that Twitter users are heavily internet savvy, unlike other parts of the population. The ‘take out’ however is that this group is growing and they want choice.

2. When does advertising become information? And then at what point are people prepared to pay for advertising because it is information they want. This is a subtle twist in the new world we are living in. The old ways are no longer good enough, we all expect not to be sold to on a mass basis, we expect to seek, easily find, choose and then engage. Or alternatively to be targeted with products and services that meet our current requirements exactly eg the right brand, the right price, the right time, the right personal referral…

In conclusion what I am sure of is that Yellow Pages as they currently stand have no future unless they radically re-invent themselves. I am positive that there is still a place for a printed product, distributed to certain people promoting certain types of businesses in certain areas – almost on a personalized basis and possibly including additional types of information.

And regarding on-line, well I have to confess an interest here as I am one of the founders of www.brownbook.net, where we have turned the current ‘centrally produced, centrally sold’ YP model upside down – we encourage everyone to instantly edit our data, just like Wikipedia, and now we are rewarding people who contribute to Brownbook with 20% of the life time value of our customers. All our customers self-service and pay via Paypal. We have the benefit of no legacy cost model, no shareholders that are demanding a return to the halcyon days, no debt, and no highly profitable cash cow. We are pioneering a new way with really interactive, engaging and innovative products for businesses on a very low or no cost basis. This is where we see the future…

Brownbook continues to gather pace.  Out latest coverage in The Canadian Gazette is an interesting feature focusing on the demise of traditional phonebooks and the growing popularity of online local search alternatives like us – that offer consumers so much more.  To read the article click here.

I was asked the other day why we don’t do radiating search, and its a good question the answer to which is not immediately obvious.  I figured it may be useful to share the reasons why?

When we first designed Brownbook.net we set out to challenge all the established rules of how local business directories ’should’ work (coming from a big directory background as we do this was not always easy, but an exercise we def wanted to do).

#Evolution of tag-style searches in other web behaviors:
The use of tags to replace traditional ‘more scientific’ methods (tags versus hierarchical taxonomies/classification structures, and geo tags versus radiating search) is becoming more prevalent on the web and an accepted behavior that allows consumers and publishers (businesses in the case of business listings) to naturally reach a equilibrium of self regulation.  What I mean by this is that instead of maintaining a complex (and by definition rigid) taxonomy you use tags to allow that taxonomy to evolve naturally over time (some people may be familiar with the term folksonomy).  We see the same rules that apply to a hierarchical category taxonomy applying to a radiating geo search.

It’s not a short answer, but as with all simple concepts the wiring under the board is often more complex than you’d imagine.  But in short geo tags let users and busineses define what works best for them, without the arbitrary rules that the traditional directories had to enforce.

I am VERY pleased to say that our mobile platform passed testing with FLYING COLORS today, and will go live at the end of our next development phase around 18th June. I see that Yellow Pages in the US has been getting some great PR about their new iPhone mobile interface – jeez, wait till they see our stuff. You can do practically everything on our mobile platform that you can do on the full site, with the exception of claiming a listing (we’re dependent upon sending you to PayPal for that, and I’m not so sure their UI is all that great on a mobile yet, but you can expect that to follow VERY soon.

One VERY cool thing, the ability to save any business listing straight to your phone’s address book. Its actually amazingly simple to program for (or so the dev guys tell me) and its equally simple in use.

Anyway, 18th June, or there abouts for Brownbook.net mobile, coming to an iPhone near you – and a Treo, Blackberry, Sony Ericsson, Motorolla, Samsung, Nokia,…you get the idea.

If you’d like to get a preview of our Brownbook Mobile, drop me a line at dave[at]brownbook.net, I’d be interested to hear more user feedback.

Cheers

D

OpenSearch is a neat technology that lets you perform a search against our database and get the results returned to you as an XML feed.  Visit OpenSearch.org to get the background scoop.

This means you can add your own search to your website and receive a set of results in a feed that you can format to display any way you like, for example to match your website’s look and feel.
Here’s an example of a simple implementation by LocalMouth.  This was done in (literally) a few minutes.  Read their blog here.

You can go even further, say you wanted to restrict your search to just one area, like Colorado, or even more specifically Boulder?  How about to a specific business sector, like for example electricians, or painters?  Well, our OpenSearch interface will allow you to do that too.

It works by firing a specially formatted URL, which contains your specific search terms, at our server.  Our server sends back an atom XML feed that you can chop up to present the data in the format you wish.  You can use entry fields on your webpage, or even a drop down list, to construct the search terms into that URL, so you can make it as specific or as open as you wish for your users.

If you want to start using our OpenSearch API see here for more details, and drop us a line if you need any help.

Local information website LocalMouth (www.localmouth.com) is the first website to use Brownbook.net’s OpenSearch API.  See how they’re using it to produce select listings of local companies here – http://www.localmouth.com/go/winchester/businesses