/2006/03/qype-another-contender-in-the-local-review-market/ A European Perspective on Venture Capital and the Internet Fri, 28 Oct 2011 10:21:26 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 /2006/03/qype-another-contender-in-the-local-review-market/#comment-1042 Planblog » Blog Archive » Qype beta Thu, 06 Apr 2006 09:58:55 +0000 /2006/03/qype-another-contender-in-the-local-review-market#comment-1042 [...] Some further comments over at Christian’s blog: Qype - Another Contender in the Local Review Market. [...] [...] Some further comments over at Christian’s blog: Qype – Another Contender in the Local Review Market. [...]

]]> /2006/03/qype-another-contender-in-the-local-review-market/#comment-307 Christian Tue, 14 Mar 2006 15:20:26 +0000 /2006/03/qype-another-contender-in-the-local-review-market#comment-307 Hi Valerie, I am sorry to be late to reply but glad that Stephan beat me to it, and thanks for both your comments...for one, I agree that local search/directories are a very crowded market. Goyellow as well as many others, inculding the recent launch of local services by web.de, are competing in thie market. And finally, the "Gelbe Seiten" (Yellowpage) brand has been built over many decades and at least the brand aspect should carry over relatively nicely to the web. Yet, I do believe that there is room for new entrants provided they position themselves in a sufficiently different manner. No one of the existing players (to my knowledge) really uses a strong community aspect and thus changes the site's feeling from that of a impersonal directory lookup to that of a more personal experience, where you get a feeling for what other people like, maybe see what other things they recommend etc. I know the comparison is far fetched, but before del.icio.us there were already tons of ways to keep and manage your bookmarks online - the single user problem had been solved. Yet, del.icio.us added community, the ability to see what others are doing and maybe benefit from their bookmarks if you realize you share their interests, as well as deriving value from the aggregate statistics (e.g. del.icio.us/popular) While I am not sure whether it is possible to build such an intensive community here in Germany (Yelp is doing fine at it in the US), there definitely is value in community here even if it is a less social experience (see insiderpages.com). We'll see how much space is left next to the big players...in short, I don't think the existing services really add enough value beyond pure lookup, and while I just discussed the community aspect above I believe there is a variety of things to make the service more valuable, and through that increase customer retention/lifetime value (more repeat visits...) as well as reduce customer acquisition cost (virality...). Hi Valerie, I am sorry to be late to reply but glad that Stephan beat me to it, and thanks for both your comments…for one, I agree that local search/directories are a very crowded market. Goyellow as well as many others, inculding the recent launch of local services by web.de, are competing in thie market. And finally, the “Gelbe Seiten” (Yellowpage) brand has been built over many decades and at least the brand aspect should carry over relatively nicely to the web.
Yet, I do believe that there is room for new entrants provided they position themselves in a sufficiently different manner. No one of the existing players (to my knowledge) really uses a strong community aspect and thus changes the site’s feeling from that of a impersonal directory lookup to that of a more personal experience, where you get a feeling for what other people like, maybe see what other things they recommend etc.

I know the comparison is far fetched, but before del.icio.us there were already tons of ways to keep and manage your bookmarks online – the single user problem had been solved. Yet, del.icio.us added community, the ability to see what others are doing and maybe benefit from their bookmarks if you realize you share their interests, as well as deriving value from the aggregate statistics (e.g. del.icio.us/popular)
While I am not sure whether it is possible to build such an intensive community here in Germany (Yelp is doing fine at it in the US), there definitely is value in community here even if it is a less social experience (see insiderpages.com). We’ll see how much space is left next to the big players…in short, I don’t think the existing services really add enough value beyond pure lookup, and while I just discussed the community aspect above I believe there is a variety of things to make the service more valuable, and through that increase customer retention/lifetime value (more repeat visits…) as well as reduce customer acquisition cost (virality…).

]]> /2006/03/qype-another-contender-in-the-local-review-market/#comment-299 Stephan Uhrenbacher Fri, 10 Mar 2006 12:01:09 +0000 /2006/03/qype-another-contender-in-the-local-review-market#comment-299 Valerie: I do not really want to comment on Goyellow, but there are more efficient ways out there to gain traction online than nationwide tv advertising. It is all a question of how fast you want to reach awareness (goyellow wanted to be very fast), how different the quality of your service and how viral your product is. (Yelp has been proven to be relatively viral, others in the US less so). Greetings from Hamburg Stephan Valerie: I do not really want to comment on Goyellow, but there are more efficient ways out there to gain traction online than nationwide tv advertising.

It is all a question of how fast you want to reach awareness (goyellow wanted to be very fast), how different the quality of your service and how viral your product is. (Yelp has been proven to be relatively viral, others in the US less so).
Greetings from Hamburg
Stephan

]]> /2006/03/qype-another-contender-in-the-local-review-market/#comment-298 Valerie Thompson Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:39:08 +0000 /2006/03/qype-another-contender-in-the-local-review-market#comment-298 Hi Christian, Qype and ICS will be faced with the cost of building a new brand or destination on the Web, at least if the experience of Germany's Goyellow.de is anything to go by. It is different than Qype, in the sense that it is based on yellow pages phone listings (with visual search (maps) and pay per call), but it can also be called a local search site. Any thoughts on it? It is owned by Varetis (publicly traded) so the information about how much it has invested is all online. Traffic exceeds that of its direct rival, Deutsche Telekom's yellow pages, but sales are practically non-existent. Do you think it will make any return on its relatively large investment, which is at least €24M and counting.... Greetings from Zurich Valerie Hi Christian,
Qype and ICS will be faced with the cost of building a new brand or destination on the Web, at least if the experience of Germany’s Goyellow.de is anything to go by. It is different than Qype, in the sense that it is based on yellow pages phone listings (with visual search (maps) and pay per call), but it can also be called a local search site.

Any thoughts on it? It is owned by Varetis (publicly traded) so the information about how much it has invested is all online. Traffic exceeds that of its direct rival, Deutsche Telekom’s yellow pages, but sales are practically non-existent.
Do you think it will make any return on its relatively large investment, which is at least €24M and counting….
Greetings from Zurich
Valerie

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