Comment by laurentabbal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by laurentabbal | Hacker News Reader

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Hi guys

I've already spent several weeks on this project and I've decided to launch the website today even if it's not finished (beta version).

The idea is to continue the development according to feedback, comments and advice. There are still 1000 things to do : design, typo, features, improve lists...

What does the site offer? The idea is to offer users the ability to create their own marketing lists and use them as they please. You can create as many geolocalized open data lists as you want. You select a geographical area, define parameters (categories, keywords ...) and the system extracts for you downloadable data such as name, location, address, telephone number, website, email address ...

Let's say you want to get a list of all the restaurants in Manhattan. When you register, you receive 500 baits (a bait = a location detail such as name, address, phone number, website ... if available) 1. Create a "fishing expedition" and define criteria (mainly category = restaurant) 2. Create a new pond (you will fish in this pond): With the drawing tool, create a line around Manhattan. 3. Click on "dig and fish" and you will know how many baits you need to get all the data 4. Then click on "fish them all!" and you will have a list of all the restaurants and their available details (name, address, telephone number, website...). This list can be downloaded as a 'csv' file (you can open this file with Excel, LibreOffice, Google Sheets...)

Data from services such as Google Maps or Foursquare can not be used for marketing or communication purposes. For example, the Google Maps Terms of Service (3.2.4) states "Customer will not extract, export, scrape, or cache Google Maps Content for use outside the Services". Data from The Data Pond are under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).

The data you will get from The Data Pond are not as rich as data from services like Google Maps or Foursquare but, at least, it is legal to use them.

If you have any comment or advice, do not hesitate. Shot.

Some feedback:

1) It seems you're selling location details for businesses and other places of interest? Make it extremely clear that this is not people. Also need much more detail on the source, legality and quality of this data.

2) Remove the fish/pond/bait naming. It's not a game, and these terms and descriptions just make it harder to understand and look unprofessional. Stick with normal terms like credits/lists/locations, etc.

3) Location and geographic data is an extremely competitive field. You need to figure out exactly who you're selling to and why. It seems you're going after self-service individuals/small-businesses market. Beware that there will be lots of unscrupulous and shady characters in this segment.

4) After the above, figure out your pricing and make it clear.

5) HN is not the best place to show this. Try some of the marketing forums and chatrooms to get feedback.

Thanks! It's just a beta and many things need to be improved. The first point is whether the idea is good. If so, improvements will be made based on comments and advice. Thanks again.

Idea's don't matter, it's all about execution and solving a problem that customers will pay for. You said in your other comment that you are new to marketing which is troubling to hear since this is not a simple industry to get into to.

That's why I asked about what it is exactly that you're providing and to whom. You should really have an answer to that before you go any further.

Eh, I disagree vehemently with 5).

- A geonerd and open data nerd who working now works in marketing engineering after years of working elsewhere in the stack.

I do not agree 2) & 3)

Maybe his way to be different is to use funny terms and gamify the experience.

OSM is very geeky and this could be a new open door for many.

immediate reference : glitch.com . How not helpful would it be to follow your recco ? (then again, the guys @ glitch are uber successful before glitch, so they are more prone to "do whatever they want and just not fit the traditional"

I'm assuming this is a B2B service as stated on the homepage. Gamification is good for encouraging user-engagement and generally works when you can trade that engagement for ads or something else. It almost never works for B2B and it's very hard to pull off the cute/humorous approach. If you want people to pay you, you should make it as easy as possible for them to understand the product and value they're getting.

I don't really see what Glitch has to do with this. The fact that a gamified/cute site exists isn't an argument that this should be the same way. I also don't see anything about what you disagreed with point #3.

2) Several people made this remark. Now, I do not know if I keep it that way or if I do something more classic.

3) I'm learning. I am not used to the field of "marketing"

Do you have a business problem you're solving with what you've built? If you're new to marketing, what was the motivation behind creating this?

Generally, within marketing you need reliable data that can support audience segmentation, market research, targeting or advertising.

The restaurant scenario may be good for a sales person, but they would want more information like the owner/manager of the restaurant, details on foot traffic etc. so they can 'size up' a target customer for a 'sales call'.

That said, bsed on the data quality disclaimers you noted, it seems the data may not be practical for real world use-cases due to scraping restrictions.

Duly noted. What do you mean by "for real world use-cases due to scraping restrictions"?

Why not A/B test #2

IMO there is some negative connotations to “bait” and “fish” but that may resonate with your audience.

About legality, anyone has legal knowledge about this kind of data sharing ?

#1 I agree. I wasn’t sure it was people data and/or businesses

How did you gather your own data if you did not use sources like Google Maps or Foursquare?

It's just a fancy frontend for OSM data extracts.

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