Comments on: Brownbook directory lets you get in on the action

The newly-launched site takes a wiki approach, allowing users to edit and update business listings and offer reviews. But so far anyway, those reviews are lacking.

[Marc-Lyne]

Hi Don,

I am one of the Brownbook founders?

Thanks for writing about us.

When we launched Brownbook earlier this year, we took the decision to give the site ?utility? by seeding 27 million businesses (US, UK, Canada and Australia), and now thousands of businesses are being added by users every week. Unique visitors to the site are increasing at a rate >10% week on week. Because anyone can add, edit and review any business instantly, the data is getting better every day.

We are also a platform for all those businesses that never reach traditional directories, the long tail of businesses e.g. the dog walkers, gardeners, baby sitters, those moonlighting outside of their day jobs?

A few weeks ago we launched ?user earnings?. This is where people who contribute to Brownbook are rewarded with a 20% lifetime share of brownbook revenue? here is a video that explains it:

http://blog.brownbook.net/2008/10/23/we-are-going-to-pay-you-a-lifetime-share-of-all-brownbook-revenue/

Thanks again.

Marc.

[WeCanDoBIZ]

An interesting review. There is little doubt that business search is due an overhaul, but any new leader in this space is going to need to show the sort of enormous value that will stop people going to TripAdvisor for hotels, Yelp for restaurants etc. It will also need to cover B2B companies properly, which few such sites do. I also don't think search will serve us well enough in the future, because the results are too easy to corrupt. Much more relevant is an individual "being found" by service providers -- they enter what they need and the guys who can provide it come to them with 100% relevant answers. We are trialing such a concept with the Biz Need feature on our site currently, encouraging business professionals to enter their most urgent business need, which we then match to listed companies and send them a prompt to contact the person with the need. It's working well with B2B needs and companies.

For a directory listing to displace the encumbents it is going to need to move the game on significantly. I can't see this happening yet, but the possibilities of semantic search are exciting.

By the way, I am unsure where the social networking elements of Brownpages are...?

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

[davidingram]

Hi Don, may I point out a few extra things... my guess is, if you only got results from Canada your country was set to canada or 'global'. You see the flags top right. If in 'global' i see the canadian resulst come up first, but my guess is you didnt notice the 'filter by country' flags at the head of the search results (feedback is - thsi should probably be more obvious).
Fair point re looking for a walmart store, and I would do the same as would most people i guess, but the usefulness is when you dont know that you want Walmart, you just know you need an attorney, accountant, etc in a particular area.

[davidingram]

Hi Ian, the social elements are the transparency around the contributors. When you make a contribution I can see what other contributions you've made, and thus I can get a 'feel' for how credible your input is. For example, a review by a user that has made only one contribution may get less credibility in my mind than a reviewer that has a dozen or more. Its not an exact science, but comes down to subjective human judgement, just like in the real world.

[flickd]

Great review Don..

I think brownbook has stumbled onto something, but as you point out (in not so many words) they have their work cut out for them. But I do see the need for a service that allows one to review major firms and organizations; rather than just local mom and pop firms around the world. Where they have fallen short is not looking a little more closely at how people really work. Yelp, yellowpages and other services in this space work fine...its the having to go to many places to post a review that most people avoid.