The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

I am really enjoying The Search by John Battelle. Send me your address and I will send you a copy. Battelle describes the state of the art in search when Google was founded as Backrub (Alta Vista was leading edge). Google's founders, Page and Brin set out to solve the relevancy problem by looking at how links to and from a site can be weighted. Of course FastCall solves another relevancy problem by analyzing CDRs (the call experience). Google's algorithms were not designed to measure the relevancy of a local business. They were designed to differentiate Intel's link to IBM.com from a hobbyist link to IBM.com (the example used in the book).

I'll post more thoughts later. In the meantime, here's what Amazon has to say:
http://www.amazon.com/
...The Search: it's probably on Bill Gates' reading list, and that of almost every venture capitalist and startup-hungry entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. In its sweeping survey of the history of Internet search technologies, its gossip about and analysis of Google.

Author John Battelle was a founder of The Industry Standard and then one of the original editors of Wired.

ZiffLeads publisher network - hype or fact?

From today's Marketwire - do they really have the largest network? and what's something like this mean for us? Or is it just standard jumping up and down to attract attention?

ZiffLeads, a pioneering pay-per-call advertising network, developed and operated by SPG Solutions, today announced a significant augmentation to their pay-per-call advertising publisher network. Advertisers signing up at www.ZiffLeads.com for set-price pay-per-call leads can now reach customers via the largest distribution network in the industry.
ZiffLeads' advertisers can create and manage phone-based lead generation campaigns in one easy location and target prospects searching the major search engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN, leading local directories: Local.com and SuperPages.com, directory assistance services: 1-800-FREE411, and the major wireless carriers: Verizon, Cingular, Sprint/Nextel, and T-Mobile, via search and content services from Google and UpSnap. Additionally, ZiffLeads advertisements reach targeted podcast listeners via podcast advertising network partner, Kiptronic, and will soon reach targeted audiences of over 40 major cable TV stations and 900 plus radio stations.

Msoft acquiring TellMe

Greg Sterling's blog has a post that Msoft is acquiring TellMe. He quotes: "One issue for Microsoft, if it were to follow Jingle’s lead and make some or all TellMe applications ad supported, would be advertiser acquisition. AdCenter is growing but Microsoft (of the big three) has few local advertisers — it gets them from third parties like SuperPages and Ingenio."

We just may have the solution to this problem!

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=4460

Did you know that FastCall411 was born as DialHappy?

FastCall411 was called DialHappy when conceived in December 06. Here's the original logo designs.

http://fastcall411.com/FastCall411/dh_logocomps_120506.jpg

Service Area vs. Proximity

I've often though that service categories should be defined by service area (the distance the merchant is willing to travel to the consumer) as opposed to the current practice of measuring proximity to the consumer. In instances where the merchant travels to the consumer - its service area that matters. We should keep this in mind as we think of search for FastCall411.

Categories - need some input

We have 210 categories so far, organized by: Auto Services, Home Services, Personal Services and Professional Services. This is less than Yahoo and most other sites (http://yp.yahoo.com/). There is also overlap (i.e. car rental could be a personal service and auto service). We will need to figure out how to deal with category overlap.

We want to focus on:

1. Phone-oriented businesses
2. Business that will pay for leads
3. Businesses where the consumer may have a sense of urgency
4. Categories where the consumer is choosing a service (not insurance paid medical)
5. Categories where most search produces a long list of choices and relevancy is important
6. Categories where the speciality can be captured in a few bullet points (divorce lawyer, exterior painter)
   

If we launch with 210 cats, in 6 area codes and 10 "deep" we will have 12,600 merchants in the database. This does not take into consideration rotation.

On one hand, I want there to be a wide breadth of categories, or the other hand, we want to focus on the highest producing categories. We will only pay for search (keywords) in the most productive cats. Do we try to make our initial cat list more comprehensive, or more focused?

Also - what's the vote on the 1-2 categories that we will buy key words for. This will be the initial test of consumer response.

I like Dentist, Chiropractor. Any other ideas?

Executive Summary (Original)

FastCall411 is a consumer-oriented mobile and local search application with the industry’s first effective pay-per-call revenue model.

FastCall411 is custom-developing a proprietary, tightly integrated system to combine local search, telecom, merchant relevance, billing and reporting. Unlike all other local search sites that list the vast telecom database of merchants by proximity to the searched address or worse, alphabetically, FastCall411 will list merchants by a relevancy algorithm weighted by historical telephone call answer rates. This data is collected by utilizing proprietary click-to-talk (VoIP) call routing applications to connect phone calls for searching consumers in need of local services to merchants who are available to provide urgent service and actively want new business leads.

Each consumer call will dial one merchant directly, multiple merchants in tandem or consecutively dial merchants until a connection to a merchant is made. Achieving a near-100% connection rate.

FastCall411 Will:

1. Power highly-actionable local search for mobile, web and directory assistance (DA) searches.
2. Have an unprecedented local merchant recommendation engine delivering “relevant” local merchants.
3. Focus on emergency and time-sensitive local services.
4. Deliver a targeted, scalable local search revenue model.

Company founders have deep experience in SIP/VoIP, call routing and pay-per-call. Based on our in-depth research and experience in the field, we've found that the primary obstacle to pay-per-call powered local search is call volume.

FastCall411 solves the call volume problem by offering the consumer a better way to find a local service provider. We eliminate the need for consumers to call merchant after merchant in hopes of finding one in business and ready to take a call. The company will tap a vast source of consumer leads (estimated at 100,000,000 calls monthly) by redirecting calls that would be made to unqualified, out-of-business, or otherwise unresponsive merchants and deliver these telephone leads, on a pay-per-call basis, to merchants who are in business and want new leads.

The unprecedented FastCall relevancy algorithm will qualify and create brand awareness with local advertisers in categories where there is high need or urgent situations. The company will utilize paid and organic search (SEM and SEO) as well as partnerships to generate pay-per-call leads more cost-effectively than all competitors. Prospects sales will be driven by a focused, targeted telesales effort.

Tagline - input please

Until now, we've been using a tag line on our web site mock ups, "A better way to find and contact local merchants and service providers "

However, I think it's too gawky and awkward...more like a boring description than a true tag line. A true tag line is short and precise, a quip that says it all, is easy to remember, and easy to say or write. Something that we can live with a long time.

Here are some alternatives - please post your own ideas, or comment on any of the following:

> >> >> > A better way to connect with local businesses
> >> > The fastest way to find and call a local business
> >> > The smartest, fastest way to find a local business or service

Thanks much, Amy

Welcome Rashmi Nigam, Dir Product Development

I am pleased to welcome Rashmi Nigam. Rashmi will be leading our product development vision and will apply her newly minted UCLA MBA skills to strategic planning, modeling, etc (MBA expected 2009). She was Product Manager at eHarmony for 3 years where she led a team of 40+ to build a new concept from launch to Version. 2.0. Rashmi also managed operations, marketing and product as co-founder of an entrepreneurial venture, Metromela.com. She and I also both spent time at Warner Music. Different roles. Different coasts. She was in Burbank as a Java Developer. She received her MS in Information Systems at Northeastern and her BS in Chemical Engineering. We are honored to have Rashmi on the team.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/8a7/382

Introducing Myself - Amy

Hi all,
I'm the marketing element of this project - been kicking around local telephone projects since the early 1990's when I managed a local audiotext service - Dial Houston - in Houston Texas. Twice I've launched a local yellow page program -- once for Chron.com in Houston and again on a national level for Knight Ridder Digital.

I worked with Richard at Jambo, where I created the sales branding and worked with Richard on the partner/business markeeting strategy.

Great to meet you all. First marketing project for all of us at FastCall411 is to have a singular vision of what we hope to accomplish, and I'll leave that to Richard to define.

Any ideas you have for our positioning and marketing are always welcome.

New Blog

Maybe this will be a good idea. Thought we could post to a blog to share notes, comments, etc.