Home. A little about me. Almost everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask
…

Users of Intuit’s Quicken only have to click on a blue star in the software to add their comments about a business to the Zipingo database.

Essentially they have created a core of these social apps, I suppose a framework, and you can derive your own version and customize it for your locale, needs, etc.

Several independent developers have done some real nice mash-ups using their tools and framework.

So as several others here have stated, the ability to build these type of sites is/has become much easier. The challenge is getting them populated and building a user community.

Now that approach seems counterintuitive since you are competing with the likes of google search and yahoo search. What one needs to do is find a way to get in those search results at the same time providing an added value to the businesses listed (i.e. expanded listings, maps, and other tools). This same value added enhances the utility to the consumer as well.

I know for one that I won’t go and ADD a plumber I’ve only used once to a website, thats his/her job.

Back to the idea of an API though, just for curiosity’s sake, what would people want with an API for this type of site?

YelloWikis http://www.yell...wikis.org/wiki/ is trying to wiki-ize the yellow pages w/o a starting dataset. It looks like it’s going to take them a long, long time before it’s ever useful, if they ever get there. It’s likely that the requirement they placed on themselves — comprehensive coverage rivaling the yellow pages — is much too large for the relatively few contributors to ever approach a point where the resource is useful.

But if you tweak the requirements based on a slightly different user need (i.e. “blue ocean” approach), I’m not so sure a comprehensive dataset is necessary.

For example, if you limit your scope to service providers (as Angie’s List has), all of a sudden the dataset is manageable and a relatively small number of contributors can create a resource that’s useful to thousands or hundreds of thousands of people.

How many plumbers in Washington D.C. need to have a great rating for the directory to be useful to me? Likely only five or six.

In that scenario, the very costly expense of a starting dataset probably isn’t necessary.

They will sometimes try new things – but only once if they don’t result in referencable sales. In some ways they are a tougher crowd than the Madison Ave. advertisers.

I like Angie’s list and use it (and pay to subscribe). The subscription results in what I find to be higher quality reviews since the people doing the reviews care enough about getting good services that they too subscribe. I suspect the broader-based free services will also provide some value (where would I be without TripAdvisor.com!) though I think the reviews can be gamed.

I agree with Michael that open free services would be much better than silos though it does give someone an aggregation opportunity!

http://www.clic...cle.php/3424401

These data sources are a bit off-topic from the ‘local, grassroots business review’ sites that kicked off this thread.

But I think it’s actually a great example of the benefit that can be provided by the right local business review application & userbase.

These data providers exist because it’s hard to centrally organize, vet & QA large amounts of data.

Distribute it, though, let the ‘wisdom of crowds’ work, and these large businesses may just find themselves a victim of the participatory web.

Re: source of YP data, my understanding is that most yellow pages (online and off) start with licensed data from one of several data aggregators.

The largest of these are InfoUSA (http://www.info...ellow_pages.htm), Experian (http://www.expe...a/yllwpgs.shtml) and Acxiom (http://www.acxi...mp;DisplayID=18)