Start a directory website in 5 easy steps!

1. Buy some software like http://www.phpmydirectory.com
2. Buy some data with a republishing license (harder than it sounds)
3. Make some bold claims about your position in the marketplace (“Number One Bestest Directory Ever!”)
4. Start charging excessive amounts for priority listings and watch the business roll in.
5. Go sip martinis.

I came across an article about a new business directory that is already clashing with Yellow Pages who disagree with their statement that they are the “biggest tradespersons’ directory in New Zealand”.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/2763347/Businessmen-clash-with-Yellow-pages

Tradesmen Direct must have backed down quickly because I can’t see this claim anywhere on their site now; it is now “New Zealand’s Number One Trade Directory”. That claim is patently ridiculous to me too. A directory can only measure its success by the number of people using it and I’m sceptical that a 3 month old website with under a 1000 pages listed on Google is “number one”.

It’s great that the cost of entry into the directory market is close to nothing. It drives competition and means the consumer should get a great deal. It does mean that there are some amazingly crap websites (Tradesmen Direct actually looks alright) out there but they usually won’t go the distance.

I wish Zenbu was in a place to compete for the “Number One Tradesperson Directory” category but it is definitely weak in that department right now. Please go on and add your local electrician or plumber (or see the recipe above and buy me a martini).

The Yellow iPhone

Wouldn’t you know it? A month after I go on record saying Yellow is too big and slow to make an iPhone app, they release one. I considered having to eat crow but it did take them 18 months  from the iPhones SDK release so I stand behind my original statement; 18 months is light years in the internet era. (And remember it was Yellow who sponsored the stunt for “Jonny” to stand in line for 3 days to purchase the world’s first 3G iPhone, imagine if the first app he installed was the Yellow app…)

The guys at iPhoneNZ have a balanced review and recommend keeping it as a backup to Zenbu. http://www.iphonewzealand.co.nz/2009/all/review-yellow/

But I do like Peter’s simple take on it. http://peteinakl.tumblr.com/post/161001874/yellow-pages-iphone-app-personally-i-think

I think Zenbu has this space sewn up [better] already.

I wanted to review it myself but I can’t find it on the appStore; searching for Yellow NZ returns no results this morning and nobody is linking to it… Why release a promotional video with no product to back it up? I’m sure it will be out soon and maybe I’ll use it as a backup myself.

Edit: Fri Aug 21

The Yellow iPhone app is out now. Congratulations to the developers, I think the iPhone app is actually superior to the website service! The interface is boiled down to the bare essentials and avoids all the extra clicks Yellow forces onto users for simple requests like – to see a phone number. The results seem to be ordered by distance (a nearest search) rather than the website advertising-dollar-spend-centric-sort so are much more useful.

They’ve used the iPhone OS 3.0 features extensively (in app Maps and Email) and it works well, Apple has really hit the sweetspot with this evolution. The Zenbu app will still be my goto app, having the entire directory already offline on the phone makes it an ideal reference tool which is 95% of what I do with it.

Unfortunately they’re also constrained by the Yellow search service as the results come in live from the Yellow servers. I found a perfect example in 5 minutes of playing with the app. One of the baked in favourite searches (a nice feature) is ‘Taxi’. But the results include Tax Accountants and even the New Zealand Men’s Clinic which services erectile dysfunction in “labourers, lawyers, doctors and taxi drivers”.

Luckily for Yellow such problems should be easily fixed, they have all the data which is the biggest hurdle. All they need to do now is fix search (or give it up to Google), ditch the paper publication, chop their workforce and open up their data. Welcome to Yellow 2.0, don’t hold your breath…

July 2009 on Zenbu

2928 edits from 126 users on Zenbu in July. The biggest editors were

zenbu	1608
TeamHunterGatherer	624
psychochicken	124
SteveA	92
burgla	53
tepuna	34
jfactor	27
brownees172	27
jonzee	27
Gremlin	26
MauriceWinn	24
vrod_rider	22
skycity	21
garyt	13
Linzi	12
paul111	8
Spiker	8
mightyman	8

An exciting development which I hinted at last month was the addition of almost every car dealer in the country by TeamHunterGatherer from http://autotrader.co.nz/. Thanks very much Autotrader! It’s wonderful to hear from people who ‘get’ the Zenbu concept and see that we can all be better off by sharing.

psychochicken added the petrol brand names, such as Synergy or Ultimate, to petrol stations around the country. Petrol stations do push that brand on their signs so it makes sense for it to be in Zenbu too although I’d love to know how people are using that as I’m not sure myself!

SteveA did a lot of work on all the Speed Cameras which are listed in Zenbu. I understand these are exported and used in the nzopengps.org Garmin map project to provide custom alerts for GPS users. Very nifty, very cool.

tepuna is a new member who went to town on their local area Te Puna / Bethlehem / Omokoroa (just north of Tauranga). I love to see people get involved and add/edit lots of content in their locality. It makes Zenbu useful for them and everyone else who goes looking for things in the area. Nice one!

Actually a whole bunch of big editors last month so apologies for not hat tipping everybody but thank you to each and every one of you. Cheers!