InfoCommerce

ThomasNet Launches Purchasing Tools

2008-05-06T12:09:00.001-04:00

ThomasNet has partnered with Source One Management Services LLC, a procurement service provider, to offer free purchasing tools for ThomasNet users. This new feature, ThomasNet's Purchasing Tools, will provide ThomasNet.com users with free access to request for information/proposal/quote (RFx) and reverse auction tools. This will enable buyers who don't have purchasing software to make their purchasing processes more efficiently. Source One CEO Steven Belli said in a company press release that user efficiency can be increased by 30 percent or more because of the tools.

According to ThomasNet, users can access the desktop tools for free and can incorporate them into their daily purchasing processes without training or the need to support software systems. Buyers who register on the MyThomas section of the ThomasNet site can access the tools.

How it works: Buyers use the tools to create and send requests for quotations and can then review and analyze sellers' information in a pre-set format. Other functionality includes single or multiple line item listings; the ability to upload unlimited attachments including specs, drawings, documents and presentations; multi-currency support; secure online storage of RFx events; and the ability to copy and re-run events in the future.

This announcement is going to make ThomasNet's advertising suppliers very happy. If it works as designed, it will make it even easier for ThomasNet users (buyers) to connect with them and make purchases. By simplifying the purchasing process, ThomasNet will make it a more appealing process as well, thus turning potentially hesitant buyers into actual buyers.

If anything, the improved functionality that these new tools represent will attract more users to the site overall.

Farlex Expands TheFreeDictionary.com Site With Multi-Lingual Offerings

2008-05-06T09:46:00.002-04:00

Online reference publisher Farlex Inc. has added 13 new titles to its flagship website TheFreeDictionary.com. among those works are Mosby's Dictionary of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, Collins Spanish Dictionary & Grammar and Collins German Dictionary & Grammar. The expansion marks the introduction of non-English language resources in addition to the site's previous offerings of English reference works.

The site also features an audio tool that allows users to learn proper pronunciation by speaking the words aloud. The tool previously offered only American English pronunciations, but now lets users hear either American English or U.K. English pronunciations.

In addition to the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia and English, French, Spanish, German and Italian dictionaries, TheFreeDictionary.com features legal, computing, medical, veterinary, financial and scientific dictionaries as well as the Columbia, Wikipedia and Hutchinson Encyclopedias.

As the Internet brings people from different countries and cultures together, having such a multi-cultural and multi-lingual collection of reference works in one place makes perfect sense. For Farlex and TheFreeDictionary.com, this seems to be the ideal area for which to expand. It's certainly a great way for the company to celebrate its fifth anniversary.

If visitors of TheFreeDictionary.com were not a culturally and geographically diverse group of users before, they will most likely be now. Also likely is the addition of even more reference works to the site. Farlex, which also operates TheFreeDictionary.com, is certainly building a rather impressive stable of offerings, and it's undoubtedly a work in progress. The Farlex folks are scheduled to speak at our InfoCommerce 2008 conference this November in Philadelphia. They will probably have a lot more to talk about then.

SQAD To Launch CPM Tracking Service

2008-05-01T12:57:00.001-04:00

Media forecaster SQAD announced it will launch its first Internet-oriented service, WebCosts, which will provide advertisers an average CPM per web property. SQAD will anonymously collect pricing data from advertising agencies and clients and use the data to calculate an average cost-per-thousand view for each web site. SQAD says that the data could serve as a negotiating tool for advertisers and publishers.

SQAD expects the service to officially launch during the third quarter of this year. The company already offers a similar service geared toward the broadcast media.

SQAD's goal with this new service is to create an industry standard that serves the buy and sell sides of the online advertising community. It expects to build an environment that will generate greater Internet advertising buys and provide a comfort level for both advertisers and publishers.

This is a rather ambitious idea, and will be interesting to see how the marketplace responds. Metrics, in general, are so crucial, and oftentimes difficult to get. If SQAD's solution can accurately provide relevant metrics for advertisers, it will garner considerable interest over time. But these can be tricky numbers to grasp. We'll have to wait and see how this initiative develops.

LinkedIn Expanding Into Europe

2008-05-01T10:16:00.002-04:00

According to several media reports, social networking site LinkedIn is expanding its U.S. operations into the European market. LinkedIn apparently got the http://linkedin.co.uk domain recent made a hire to run advertising sales in its London office.

Part of LinkedIn's international expansion strategy is to bolster its targeted advertising program and promote is new product geared toward recruiters. Recruiter, is a collaborative human resources system that LinkedIn launched in February. It enables recruiters to search user profiles of individuals who have opted-in to such searches.

It's not surprising that LinkedIn is positioning itself for global expansion. It has already made such a strong impact in the U.S. market, that it's undoubtedly ready for more. The only real surprise is that it has taken this long for LinkedIn to make the international move.

Unlike its main competitors in the social networking space, MySpace and Facebook, LinkedIn appeals to a more professional audience--one that is most likely global in nature, or interested in networking on a global scale. Moving into London makes perfect sense since it doesn’t require translating LinkedIn's current site, making such an expansion rather quick and seamless. However, it won't be long before LinkedIn makes it way around the globe.

Using a Database as a Market Research Tool

2008-05-01T09:36:00.001-04:00

Global market intelligence solution provider GMI (Global Market Insite Inc.) has partnered with online IT media company TechTarget to provide market research professionals access to a worldwide community of IT professionals and decision-makers. GMI built, manages and operates the TechTarget IT Research Panel, which consists of a double-opted in panel of IT professionals who actively participate in online research.

By tapping into the knowledge of these professionals, market researchers will be able to obtain insights into their buying trends and decision-making processes for their purchases. They can then use that information to determine what products and services they can and should offer in the market.

To create the panel, the companies reached out to TechTarget's proprietary database of more than 6.6 million registered users. Of that group, more than 2.2 million corporate IT professionals have singed on to participate in the online market research.

GMI is putting some protocols in place to ensure that the market research professionals receive quality information from the survey panelists. For instance, email invitations are only sent to double-opted in panelists; and panelists are invited to double opt-in only if they pass an initial registration screen. Minimum time thresholds are in place to eliminate hasty responses. Survey takers who have provided inaccurate data in the past can be automatically blocked from taking future surveys. There is also a formal incentive program in which panelists receive points that can be redeemed for cash after they complete each survey.

Developing a targeted online market research panel is a very smart way to leverage a high quality user database. TechTarget has created such a robust database over time that it makes sense to yield additional value from it. Market research professionals would find it extremely challenging to build a panel with such qualified individuals on their own.

With this initiative, everyone is poised to win. Recipients of this research will get a better understanding of their target market, thus creating a very strong competitive advantage. The survey respondents will also benefit because they will be heard. Researchers will learn exactly what these IT professionals want--they'll hear it directly from them. As a result, the IT folks will be rewarded with future offerings of products and services that meet their specified needs.

infoUSA Changing Name to infoGROUP

2008-04-28T14:39:00.001-04:00

infoUSA announced that it is changing its name to infoGROUP, effective June 1. According to a press release, company brass feel the new name better represents the organization's expanding global presence and long-term business strategy.

The company notes that many acquisitions, such as its Opinion Research buy, have effectively solidified infoUSA as a global company and prompted an expansion of infoGROUP's research and database functions.

infoGROUP, which is headquartered in Omaha, Neb., has offices in Canada, the U.K., Australia, India, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. The company plans to move into New Zealand and Ireland, as well as expand its current operations in Australia and other regions. It won't be surprising to see the company expand elsewhere over time, as this name change certainly demonstrates the company's commitment to further its presence across the globe.

It might take a while for customers to become accustomed to the new name, but the decision to take such a big step is certainly understandable. infoUSA has really been a global company for many years, but the name has definitely not reflected that. Branding is so key; and to be perceived as a global company in the marketplace, your identity has to very clearly communicate that. In that regard, a name like infoUSA was limiting the company's the perception that it is a global company.

AutoUpLinkUSA Launches New Search Tool for Car Buyers

2008-04-28T12:09:00.001-04:00

AutoUpLinkUSA, an inventory data and vehicle image acquisition, management and online publishing company, has launched a new feature that will enable car buyers to search for used cars based on ownership history. More specifically, they will be able to narrow their search results to include just Carfax 1-Owner cars. AutoUpLink will also provide consumers with access to Carfax vehicle history reports that subscribing dealers have already run.

This new search feature seems very simple at first glance. But sometimes, the most simple ideas are among the best. AutoUpLink possibly put itself in itself in its customers' shoes when developing this search function.

All online shoppers want to find exactly what they're looking for as quickly as possible This feature will help them accomplish that goal when searching for a used vehicle, with the end result a more efficient and productive web experience.

At the same time, the new feature will also benefit AutoUpLink's dealership customers by connecting them with interested buyers more quickly. Essentially it will help the dealerships better market themselves to the end consumer and hopefully lead to increased sales.

Adding Value Still Adds Value

2008-04-25T14:58:00.000-04:00

About a year ago, I signed up to receive an email newsletter from TabletHotels.com. TabletHotels is a site offering reviews of, and reservations for, unusual boutique hotels worldwide, describing itself as a resource for "global nomads."

Since I am highly protective of my inbox, and am decidedly not a global nomad, it's reasonable to ask what attracts me to this website and its newsletter. Let's start with the graphic design, among the most attractive and inviting I have seen. The user interface is equally good. The hotels are individually selected, putting TabletHotels into a distinctly different class from the myriad hotel booking sites that want you to do all the legwork and decision-making yourself. The information on each hotel is rich, deep and clearly not cookie cutter or recycled hotel brochure copy. There is an elegant and powerful booking engine, and lots of special discounts to further entice a user to make a booking.

What caught my eye this morning was an announcement by TabletHotels that it is adding user reviews to its site. That, by itself would be a giant yawn as almost every hotel booking site has already added user reviews. What really intrigued me was that TabletHotels would only publish reviews from registered users where it could confirm that the user had actually stayed at the hotel. That's no small benefit in a world where well- known sites such as TripAdvisor.com are being faulted for having so many reviews it is becoming hard to draw any conclusions from them. It's also important in a world where reviews have become so important to hotels that some of them are posting anonymous favorable reviews of themselves to "fight back" against unfavorable reviews.

There is a lot to commend the notion of verified reviews. They reduce the overall number of reviews, reducing clutter and noise and making those reviews that do appear more valuable. Clearly, they also make the reviews more trustworthy, and again, more valuable. They also burnish the image of the site overall as one committed to providing only trusted, quality information.

Are verified reviews more work? Absolutely. But to my mind, extra effort is what distinguishes those who will be the long term winners in the information business. Too many Web 2.0 start-ups seem to think more is better, and dismiss the very concepts of editing, filtering or verifying. But these have provided the long-standing essence of publishing, and they aren't called "value-add" for nothing.

Sony Acquires Gracenote

2008-04-24T11:25:00.001-04:00

Sony Corp. of America announced this week that it plans to acquire Gracenote, an InfoCommerce Group Models of Excellence winner, for a price of $260 million. Sony plans to operate Gracenote as a separate business unit; and Gracenote's senior management team will remain in place.

Gracenote is a provider of embedded technology, enriched content, and data services for digital entertainment solutions in the Internet, consumer electronics, mobile and automotive markets. According to a press release announcing the deal, Sony plans to use the acquisition to further develop its digital content, service and device initiatives.

Sony was already a customer of Gracenote. Other Gracenote customers include Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Music Jukebox, Panasonic, Philips and Samsung. So Gracenote already had a strong presence in its space.

Yet, with the backing of a prominent company like Sony, Gracenote is positioned to grow even more rapidly than it would have on its own. Essentially, this deal signifies how valuable Gracenote's offerings are and will continue to be in the electronics marketplace.

Local Directory for Instructors Launches in Seattle

2008-04-24T11:15:00.003-04:00

A new local directory has launched in the Seattle area. TeachStreet is a free service that helps connect people with more than 25,000 teachers, coaches and other instructors in the area. Users can search TeachStreet to find instructors for classes such as yoga and beer making. Searches can be targeted through a variety of criteria including neighborhood and age range.

To collect contact information for the TeachStreet database, TeachStreet has enlisted the help of a team of contractors to manually collect the data--which includes names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and pricing information. The contractors comb sources such as Google, Craigslist, school catalogs and other web sites to find the information.

TeachStreet recently announced a $2.25 million venture round of funding. But the company plans to use online advertising to grow revenues. It will offer instructors the opportunity to purchase sponsored links and will eventually launch premium services (such as payment processing to instructors).

This is an interesting idea, but it will only be successful if contractors can collect enough information--and the most accurate information--to make it a robust offering. Still, it would be helpful if the contractors didn't have to do it alone. And they might not have to.

The company's founder is hoping that individual instructors will want to take an active role in creating and updating their profiles. If that happens, it will certainly help TeachStreet. Then, accuracy can be more confidently ensured, and the profiles will provide more value for users and the profiled instructors as well.

Major Publishers Launch Online Ad Network

2008-04-23T09:31:00.006-04:00

Digital marketing company 24/7 Real Media Inc. this week announced its partnership with four prominent publishers to launch an online business-to-business advertising network. BBN is the joint creation of Cygnus Business Media, Nielsen Business Media, Reed Business and McGraw-Hill.

Included in the network are web sites of equally prominent publications, such as Construction Equipment, Adweek, Aviation Week & Defense Technology and CPA Technology Advisor. The network attracts almost 10 million monthly unique users (60 percent of the audience is small business owners and decision-makers). BBN includes more than 200 web properties.

Now including BBN, 24/7 Real Media's offerings are comprised of more than 1,500 sites. 24/7 Real Media's network attracts about 150 unique viewers each month and it offers targeting solutions such as lifecycle management, search retargeting, geo-demographic, content, behavioral, retargeting and custom.

BBN will use Open AdStream, 24/7 Real Media's proprietary ad serving and campaign management platform to the targeting and delivery of ads to web sites.

Online ad networks certainly aren't anything new or revolutionary these days. But this particular offering could still make a huge impact on online advertisers who target the b-to-b space and want to align with these major publishing brands.

However, one interesting note is that this isn't the first time Reed has participated in an ad network. In fact, it had its own. The publisher launched the Reed Partner Network last year, and the network included both Reed Business and non-Reed web sites. BBN could actually have been considered a competitor to Reed's own network. As a result, the Reed folks say that the Reed Partner Network will cease to operate as a separate unit by the end of the month.

Exposure is key in advertising. But too much isn't a good thing.

Amateur Hour

2008-04-18T11:37:00.001-04:00

I'm just back from the Buying & Selling E-Content conference in Scottsdale. I had been particularly looking forward to hearing author Andrew Keen discuss the ideas he lays out in his book, Cult of the Amateur. I admit to being disappointed by his dialectic.

Keen's core argument (or at least what I think is his core argument - he's a man of many ideas who isn't particularly good at bringing them all together in an organized way) is that "curated content," content that has been selected and vetted by knowing professionals in publishing and media organizations, is valuable. Nobody can argue with that. But Keen goes on to suggest that giving voice to anyone who wants one via social media tools has been a giant step backward for both culture and society.

As a publisher, I expected to find myself cheering his view of things, yet I walked away from his presentation feeling quite unsettled. His argument didn't sit well with me, but I was unsure why.

On reflection, I think what bothers me is that curation is not just about selecting the best; it's also (at least in the media world) inherently about keeping out everything else. The historical success of the media has come from its ability to achieve monopolies - if not business monopolies, at least audience monopolies. With relatively few media outlets and few other cost-effective ways to reach large audiences, great power resulted, power that was not always wielded fairly or wisely. Even more significantly, media concentration meant the vast majority of people would never - by design - get needed exposure or be able make their voices heard.

I've written several books on obscure topics related to data publishing. Because of their limited appeal, no book publisher was ever interested in them. So I took the tough road of self-publishing and managed over the years to sell several thousand copies of these books. These books have helped society, albeit in a very limited way, by teaching associations and corporations how to publish more useful and effective directories, guides and databases. Yet Andrew Keen would seem to ascribe no societal value to my thoughts and insights because I couldn't get past the established gatekeepers. I could make the same point about this blog. It reaches several thousand people, and more than a few readers have told me they find it useful and insightful. Yet prior to social media, I wouldn't have this audience because no trade publisher would ever publish the specialized and eclectic thoughts I choose to discuss. Disintermediation has been very, very good to me!

What Andrew Keen is railing against is not really the rise of amateurs, but rather the decline in power of the professionals. Curated content now has to compete harder in the marketplace of ideas. It now also has to compete for attention. It used to be that those who could get past the media gatekeepers (e.g. Andrew Keen) were assured of doing well financially, sometimes achieving status and celebrity to boot. Now it's a much tougher game with fewer guarantees.

I've previously described what I call the five stages of Internet migration in the publishing world: denial, incredulity, anger, adoption and embrace. Most information publishers I know are well into stage four or beyond. Andrew Keen seems mired in stage three.

Dow Jones Acquires Generate; Creates New Business Unit

2008-04-17T13:58:00.002-04:00

Dow Jones and Company today announced its acquisition of Generate Inc., which enables business intelligence through a platform that combines real-time company intelligence with integrated relationship-mapping technology. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Generate's solution is geared toward executives to help them find opportunities with future business partners. Dow Jones plans to offer this solution to its financial services and business professional customers. According to a press release announcing the deal, the Generate acquisition further solidifies Dow Jones' "Power the Intelligent Enterprise" strategy, which calls for delivering information to a company's most information-intensive job function in the time and manner in which it is needed. Generate will be housed under a new Dow Jones business unit, Business & Relationship Intelligence, which is part of the company's Enterprise Media Group.

Generate's patented extraction and aggregation technology takes company and executive data from the Internet and maps relationships among those people and organizations. It crawls more than 75 million domains and extracts information on more than 4 million companies and 6.4 million executives. The technology also mines in real-time for more than 100 trigger events, such as mergers and acquisitions, which would be of interest to a business audience. The company intelligence is integrated with relationship-mapping technology that enables users to detect competitive moves, identify prospects and make the most of their corporate and personal networks.

This marks Dow Jones' second enterprise business-related acquisition of 2008. The first was its March purchase of Dutch language news service Betten Financial News BV.

This acquisition should serve to make Dow Jones an even more powerful information provider. Customers today demand solutions that efficiently provide the information they need as well as intelligence that will help make that data work even better for them. Plain data is never enough--technology that makes it actionable is a must.

Generate's technology is especially interesting, however. As executives become much more aware of the power of networking relationships (through the increased popularity of such social networking sites as LinkedIn), they will undoubtedly welcome the opportunity to utilize such technology that will help them increase the value of those relationships. More good news for customers is that Dow Jones seems very committed to the development of its Business & Relationship Intelligence unit. Expect the company to continue to acquire businesses that will fit under this umbrella and add additional value for Dow Jones' customers.

Northstar Travel Media Apparently for Sale

2008-04-16T09:35:00.001-04:00

According to media reports, Northstar Travel Media is for sale. Boston Ventures, a private equity fund, acquired the travel information company from Reed Elsevier in 2001.

Among the company's offerings are directory/database products, including hotelandtravelindex.com (which provides hotel information to a customer base of travel agents and corporate travel planners) and omfg.com (Official Meeting Facilities Guide). OMFG, which provides property information for meeting planners, contains information on more than 42,000 facilities and 12,000 cities across the globe. Northstar also owns Star Service Online, which offers information and commentary on about 9,000 hotels worldwide.

Northstar's properties are certainly valuable to their customers. But the question is how valuable they are to prospective buyers. In such uncertain economic times, companies who may typically have been interested in making acquisitions are likely reconsidering such strategies. In addition, the travel industry is going to be among the hardest hit in a slow economic environment. Travel budgets (both personal and corporate) will undoubtedly be cut or reduced, diminishing the need for travel-related services.

It's not the best time for Boston Ventures to try to remove Northstar from its portfolio. Reasons for them doing so are unclear. It could be a while before any interested acquirers identify themselves.

LoopNet Enhances Offerings with REApplications Acquisition

2008-04-10T09:39:00.003-04:00

LoopNet this week announced its acquisition of REApplications, a provider of on-demand commercial brokerage operations software. REApplications' solutions, which serve the commercial real estate market, are web-based and facilitate a variety of functions for managing market research, including property inventory; listings and comparables; commission management; customer relationship management (CRM); project tracking; and transaction management. LoopNet bought REApplications for an aggregate cash consideration of $9.4 million.

REApplications boasts an impressive list of commercial brokerage and property valuation firms, such as Coldwell Banker Commerical and Cushman &Wakefield LePage. REApplications will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of LoopNet, and the senior management team will remain in place.

This is yet another illustration of the value created from a data-software integration and it's certainly a big win for all of the involved parties. LoopNet is able to enhance its offerings and make them more valuable--and usable--to its current customers. At the same time, REApplications will likely yield growth it probably wouldn't have been able to achieve on its own as its solutions are placed in the hands of LoopNet customers--and that's a large group. LoopNet currently has more than 2.75 registered members. Lastly, customers of both LoopNet and REApplications will benefit from the efficiencies afforded by an integrated solution that enables them to more easily complete all tasks associated with the management and marketing activities.

In today's competitive marketplace, creating this data-software integration is a must. Customers need and demand valuable content packaged with services to create a complete solution to help them achieve their goals. That is exactly what LoopNet and REApplications are now positioned to provide.

LoopNet Expands Reach of Its Listings

2008-04-09T09:21:00.001-04:00

Online commercial real estate marketplace LoopNet this week announced that its showcase property listings in the LoopNet.com marketplace will now appear on major search engines like Google and Yahoo as well as more than 100 websites of major newspapers--from The New York Times to the Dallas Morning News and The Wall Street Journal.

The LoopNet marketplace includes all commercial property categories, from office, industrial and retail to hotel, land and specialty properties. The site is used by commercial real estate agents to list properties for sale or lease. Those agents, as well as brokers, buyers and tenants use LoopNet listings to find available properties that meet their needs.

LoopNet already boasts an impressive customer list of commercial real estate firms, such as Century 21 Commercial, Cushman & Wakefield, Prudential and RE/MAX.

LoopNet's stature in the commercial real estate market has steadily increased over time and this latest announcement just emphasizes its growing profile in this industry. With this added exposure, LoopNet will be better able to serve the listing agent segment of its customer base by providing a larger showcase for its listings. Being aligned with LoopNet will also benefit the search engines and newspapers since it will greatly increase the number of listings they provide--which should yield more site visitors to their offerings in real estate as well as other advertising categories.

Do You Rate?

2008-04-04T11:54:00.001-04:00

I continue to be intrigued by the strong growth of Angie's List, a subscription consumer rating service that now claims over 500,000 subscribers. That's an impressive number of subscribers for any kind of consumer information service, and it's even more impressive because its subscribers contribute all the content. Indeed, Angie's List has achieved so much success it's confronting novel new issues as it grows and matures.

Now, Angie's List is moving to expand its ratings beyond plumbers and home contractors to include physicians, pharmacists, dentists and even health plans. I wouldn't go so far as to call this move into healthcare a risky or gutsy one; indeed it makes perfect sense. What Angie's List is diving into, however, is the large, complex, emotional and politically-charged world of healthcare provider ratings. There have to be at least a dozen sites currently offering physician ratings alone - Xoova, Vitals.com, ZocDoc, are just a few that spring to mind. We also previously noted that even ratings pioneer Zagat's has entered the fray.

Rating physicians and dentists on one level is fairly easy. Anyone can opine on how nice they are, if their offices are clean, or if they were kept waiting. But these are so-called soft assessments. What really matters is not how nice a doctor is, but how competent a doctor is. That's where things get complicated and ugly. The healthcare industry's infighting over defining and executing "outcomes measurements" and a related issue of "risk adjustment" (essentially, adjusting scores to reflect providers that routinely deal with sicker patients) has been going on for years, with no resolution.

Angie's List is right to stick with soft assessments. They play to its strengths and are far less controversial (although a growing number of physicians are saying that being rated by patients isn't fair for various reasons). But here is what bears watching: How large and robust will these ratings become? Though Angie's List subscribers represent an active and engaged community that stands a distinct chance of raising the bar for healthcare provider assessments, the more the site tries to cover, the thinner its content becomes. If Angie's List rates 12 physicians in a major city, has it succeeded or failed? I don't think anyone yet knows the answer to that, so stay tuned.

Other Recent News from the InfoCommerce Blog
Zillow Launches Mortgage Marketplace
Polk Drives Expansion into China
BusinessWeek.com Extends Reach With LinkedIn Partnership

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A Ratings Ripple?

2008-04-04T09:59:00.001-04:00

[Originally published 12/28/2007]

A small news item this week caught my eye: the owners of Angie's List, a service that rates home improvement and repair companies in a number of major cities, is suing yellow pages giant Ameritech Publishing. What Angie's List doesn't like is that some advertisers in the Ameritech directories are using the Angie's List logo in their ads as a way of indicating they were favorably rated by Angie's List.

My first reaction was that this was incredible free publicity for Angie's List, and they should be encouraging it, not going to court over it. Yet as I thought about it more, I started to see the other side of the issue.
First, if advertisers start to broadly include Angie's List "endorsements" in other publications, guess what? The need to purchase an Angie's List subscription is reduced. Cheap or lazy consumers can simply scan the yellow pages for companies sporting Angie's List logo and hire them with the knowledge they've been vetted by an independent review organization. Revenue to Angie's List: zero.

Second, Angie's List starts to lose control of its name and logo. A plumber well rated by Angie's List in January may not be well rated by December, but that annual yellow pages ad with the Angie's List logo keeps appearing, and appearing and appearing.

Third, people not familiar with Angie's List could easily be led to conclude that these advertisers have paid to be rated, which is not true. This leads to a distorted perception of Angie's List in the marketplace which could sully its brand over time. This is the primary reason that Consumer Reports has never let manufacturers advertise their Consumer Reports ratings; it doesn't want anyone jumping to conclusions about what it does or how it does it. If you want Consumer Reports information, you have to get it from Consumer Reports, which keeps control of the information, its presentation and its context in a way that enhances the brand.

Ratings services can have enormous market power, but they're like hothouse flowers: they will only flourish in a rigorously controlled environment. Let them into the outside world, and they quickly wither.

Zillow Launches Mortgage Marketplace

2008-04-03T15:09:00.004-04:00

Real estate website Zillow.com today announced the launch of Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, a service that provides borrowers a place in which to anonymously request custom loan quotes directly from registered lenders. The lenders can respond to as many requests from borrowers free of charge. It also includes a lender public feedback system in which borrowers can rate the lenders they contact.

Zillow Mortgage Marketplace is accessible on the Zillow.com site from the "Mortgages" tab. Users then complete a loan request form to officially begin the process. They don’t need to provide any personally identifiable information, such as Social Security number, name, address or phone number. Yet, they provide enough additional information on the request form to enable lenders to create customized quotes.

Any lenders who visit the Zillow.com site can view outstanding requests and competing quotes offered by other lenders. By only registered lenders, who have been confirmed as mortgage professionals, can participate in the quote process.

Borrowers can receive as many quotes as they would like; and a standardized quote form enables them to compare quotes and provide ratings and feedback on lenders. Lenders must disclose all fees upfront, while Zillow estimates taxes and insurance and provides an estimated monthly payment. Identities are only revealed when a borrower contacts a lender.

Considering the mortgage crisis the U.S. is currently facing, this could be a very good time or very bad time for Zillow to launch a home mortgage lending service. With both borrowers and lenders gun-shy at this point, perhaps such an offering is a good idea. Both parties can test the waters without revealing their identities and moving too far along in the process.

As long as consumers can locate the service, this should be beneficial to them. They can, without making a commitment, see what rates are available to them before they commit to purchasing a mortgage. Since more and more consumers prefer to conduct their own research (especially online) before making a purchase, this offering should be well received and capitalize on the trend of the Internet-educated consumer.

For lenders, this is a very economical way to generate leads--and strong leads, for that matter. It's unlikely consumers not serious about securing a mortgage would spend time completing a loan request form. Lenders should undoubtedly receive quality leads from this service. Yet, with the ratings and feedback processes in place, lenders must ensure they serve Zillow customers very well--or they will quickly receive a reputation for poor service they won't be able to hide.

It's important to note, however, that the service isn't completely free. Lenders have to pay a one-time registration fee of $25. Then they can create a public profile on Zillow.com that will feature their contact information.

More and more, we are able to see Zillow's business model, which is to generate high traffic with high-interest free content and then enhance that with value-add services that generate revenues. It's a model that seems to be working quite well.

Polk Drives Expansion into China

2008-03-31T14:13:00.002-04:00

Motor vehicle information and marketing solutions provider R.L. Polk & Co. last week announced that it will soon offer newer commercial vehicle registration data for China. The data will provide geographic and vehicle configuration detail for customers interested in understanding the commercial vehicle market in China.

The data, which will be available this summer, will be offered by Beijing Polk-CATARC VIC Co. Ltd., a joint venture between Polk and the Chinese Automotive Technology and Research Centre (CATARC). Customers will now be able to receive geographic metrics on commercial vehicle registrations in China by province, city, district and postcode. Those customers, which include commercial truck and engine manufacturers, could previously only receive national level sales and production data.

Polk's China registration data includes a variety of commercial vehicles, including buses, trucks and special vehicles (ambulances, police vehicles, cranes and firefighter engines). Various vehicle specifications will also be included: from gross vehicle weight, vehicle dimensions, dimension of cargo and payload to towing weight, wheelbase, engine model, engine displacement, fuel type, number of wheels and tire type.

Databases that cover China are still very rare in the marketplace, and that really makes this offering quite intriguing and interesting. Still, that lack of such available data doesn't mean there isn't a strong interest in this information. In today's global marketplace, the demand for such data is undoubtedly increasing at a steady pace. In fact, Polk has identified China as one of the largest and fastest growing commercial vehicle markets in the world.

This new offering will effectively expand Polk's international profile and fill a need that continues to grow. "Going global" certainly isn't anything new for Polk, which while headquartered in Southfield, Mich., has offices in countries such as France, Germany and the U.K. The company will most likely explore further development of products in these regions. Perhaps this latest launch will lead to the creation of additional products geared toward the China market.

Tell Me Something I Don't Know

2008-03-28T14:34:00.001-04:00

"Business intelligence" is a wonderful term, rife with importance, exclusivity and value. That's probably why so many data publishers have rushed to label themselves as providers of business intelligence. The term is assuredly upscale yet at the same time ambiguous, simultaneously promising everything and nothing. It's a dream term for marketers.

Yet I worry about those publishers who think "business intelligence" emanates from the marketing department rather than the editorial department. That's because the future of this business is intimately tied to delivering true business intelligence, and those who think it's a game will soon be out of the game.

Some publishers set too low a bar by believing that more information about a given company in one place constitutes business intelligence. If this is largely a collection of information available elsewhere, it's not business intelligence. It's an aggregation exercise. There's a role for aggregated content, but it simply doesn't rise to the level of business intelligence as I define it: being able to tell users something useful that they don't already know and can't easily find out from any other source.

Your reaction to my definition may be that I am setting an impossibly high bar. But for most data publishers, the jump to true business information is not a big one. It could be as simple as holding onto company press releases that disappear from the web with increasing rapidity. It could be monitoring and reporting how a company's revenues, employees, offices -- whatever -- trend over time. It could be the act of identifying a company's competitors. We know one company that plans to monitor the tenure of a company's c-suite executives to assess stability.

The web has in fact created a limitless content playground for data publishers to source, extract, mix, match, merge, infer, and impute valuable data points and insights that do in fact rise to the level of business intelligence. That's why data publishing is the most exciting corner of the information business right now. We've got the tools and the processes and the skills to create untold amount of true business intelligence extremely quickly, and often at very low cost. So let's all rise to the occasion.

BusinessWeek.com Extends Reach With LinkedIn Partnership

2008-03-27T15:37:00.002-04:00

BusinessWeek.com this week announced that it has formed two partnerships with LinkedIn, the online professional network. BusinessWeek.com and Capital IQ, a unit of Standard & Poors, will provide company data for LinkedIn's new Company Profile feature, which launched last week. [BusinessWeek and Standard & Poors are McGraw-Hill companies].

Users who take advantage of the Company Profile feature will gain access to business overviews that contain industry statistics provided by BusinessWeek and Capital IQ in additional to information about a specific company from LinkedIn. In addition, the company profile feature also contains a link to BusinessWeek.com's Company Insight Center, where users can find additional company information free of charge.

BusinessWeek.com added the Company Insider feature, where users can view personal contacts on LinkedIn at companies that are featured in BusinessWeek.com stories. Company Insider, which launched earlier this month, is the first of several LinkedIn Intelligent Applications that will be added to the site.

In a press release announcing the partnerships, Roger Neal, BusinessWeek Digital's senior vice president and general manager, noted how the features will expand the publisher's content to BusinessWeek.com's 8 million users and LinkedIn's network of 20 million registered professionals. This is certainly a great way for BusinessWeek to expand its customer base and get its content in the hands of a group that really needs it.

LinkedIn has become such a prominent player in the business networking arena that it makes perfect sense for a prominent business content player like BusinessWeek to form a partnership. This alliance will certain open many eyes to the value of BusinessWeek content and will undoubtedly lead to an increase in traffic to the BusinessWeek.com site as well as a boost in subscriptions. It's also a smart move for LinkedIn, which certainly has a credible name in the marketplace already; but being aligned with a long-established brand like BusinessWeek definitely doesn't hurt.

With Company Insider the first of many LinkedIn applications BusinessWeek.com has planned for its site, it will be interesting to see what other features are next. They certainly have to potential to make BusinessWeek.com an even more robust source for business information.

Good Vibrations

2008-03-21T13:51:00.001-04:00

One thing that's been curiously missing from the social networking/user-generated content frenzy of the past few years has been efforts to harness these concepts to build good company databases. It's particularly surprising given the success of professional sites such as Jigsaw and Linked-In, both of which have built remarkably robust databases of business professionals. But where's the company information?

We have seen a few attempts at letting users build out company content. Two basic models have been employed to date: a "backbone" model, where users can append comments to a fixed list of companies, and the publisher takes on the task of maintaining basic company contact details. Successful examples of this model include Yahoo Finance, Vault.com and start-up yellow pages sites such as BrownBook. The other model is "free-form" model where users decide what companies to cover and in what way, with the publisher supplying no content, and few if any restrictions. One infamous example of this was the F*ckedCompany.com site, now mercifully defunct. We're seeing more and more company profiles within Wikipedia, but they tend to get lost in this vast online encyclopedia.

Will people take the time to contribute to an open access company database? Can such a database rise above angry posts from disgruntled employees and disinformation from disingenuous competitors? Will people share valuable inside information about firms? Will individuals maintain constantly changing company information? Well, it seems we may be about to find out.

A new company, TradeVibes.com, still in beta, is aiming to become a user-generated company database. It rolls together wiki-like features with rating systems, company discussion board, job boards and more. It also offers a strong organizational taxonomy to allow discovery of companies in addition to research on known companies. It may very well be a glimpse of the future.

There's a lot of fresh thinking going on at TradeVibes, and a lot to commend its content model. If TradeVibes can get critical market traction, it could herald the next big thing in the data world: high-value, user- generated company information.

Marquis Launches Online Art Gallery

2008-03-20T09:08:00.002-04:00

Marquis Who's Who this week announced the launch of an Artists' Gallery web site that will feature artwork from hundreds of prominent artists. The gallery first appeared in the 2008 print edition of Who's Who in American Art before launching as a standalone online offering.

The Artists' Gallery (www.whoswhogallery.com) is searchable by artist name and media. Works range in style from oil and watercolor to sculpture and photography, and are selected by the artist. Each listing includes information such as title of the work, media, dimensions, representing gallery, personal web site and the artist's contact information. In addition, they also contain the artists' full biographical entries as they appear in the Who's Who in American Art.

The public can view the site free of charge. Marquis has already announced plans to include more artists on the site later this year.

What a clever idea. Of course, something so visual should have visual representation. Text listings just don't give such listings justice. This is really giving artists a true online portfolio; one that can't be communicated through those traditional text listings. Such listings, of course, provide value. But that value is only supplementary in this case. A picture really is worth 1,000 words.

The value extends to the featured artists (who will gain tremendous additional exposure) as well as Marquis. Since the company likely charges a fee for inclusion on the site, the new offering will help the company sell more subscriptions to the print Who's Who in American Art, thus serving as an innovative new source of revenue for Marquis.

CCC Information Services Tool Launches Workflow-Integrated Product

2008-03-20T09:06:00.003-04:00

CCC Information Services Inc., a provider of automotive claims and repair solutions, this week launched the CCC Valuescope Salvage Management Solutions. The new product includes a data-driven decision support tool to help with workflow related to total loss and salvage processes. The new offering will eliminate manual processes, such as data entry.

The solution includes a salvage assignment and workflow feature that eliminates users' needs to call salvage vendors for assignment. Instead the tool sends an assignment to the vendor during the handling process. Users can also obtain updates to help them determine the status of salvage disposal. In addition to the assignment and workflow feature, they can also use the CCC Intellisphere Reporting Solution to measure salvage process efficiencies during a claim's life.

This is yet another segment of professional business information users that will benefit from a solution that is integrated into the workflow. It's certainly becoming the norm, and not the exception, these days for information providers to combine content and services to create efficiencies in the workplace.

Users of the CCC Valuescope Salvage Management Solutions will undoubtedly reap immediate benefits. Perhaps the only challenge will be the learning curve. Transitioning users accustomed to manual processes may take some time. But if CCC's solution is as user-friendly as such solutions strive to be, user acceptance won't be far behind.