BrownBook Open Data Business Directory
Posted by sandnsurf on December 2008
Having some great fun with BrownBook.net having stumbled on the twitter profiles of @DaveIngram and @Marc_Lyne the CEO and COO of BrownBook.net which started in May 2008. Fantastic overview and interview with Robert Scoble is the best way of really understanding the key principles behind BrownBook.net (hosted below)
Brownbook.net is a free GLOBAL business directory that ANYONE can edit. Users can find, review and add businesses in any country in the world (240 countries to date). Currently there are 27 million listings worldwide, primarily focussing on UK, Australia and the US and growing at 35% each month!
The website is crisp, simple to use and highly functional. The ethical model behind BrownBook relies on Open Data, community participation and individual ownership.
My favorite features:
- Anyone can add a business, anyone can review a business, and anyone can update a business listing
- Free to use Brownbook.net to find businesses
- Free to list any business
- Free to update and edit your business listing ‘dynamically’ (see Video)
- Business operators can claim a listing for $10 and for $22 can fully customize their listing
- Business owners can create their own website within BrownBook
- Even better – once a business is ‘claimed’ the last person to have edited the business prior to the claim…gets paid. The more businesses that are added the better Brownbook becomes and the more people contribute then the more people will be rewarded for contributing.
- ‘Open Search’ Data Structure - NOT a centrally controlled service. Data can be used by to create local search or vertical searchvia xml query (and take advantage of reviews)
- Looks great on a mobile phone m.brownbook.net
Search is simple and business listings can be found by name, location, or type of business anywhere in the world!
Businesses which claim their listing can edit with a WP-like WYSIWYG editor and upload logos, videos, photos and additional content. With an exponentially growing number of places to promote themselves online – BrownBook.net provides a simple, cheap and safe additional resource for business promotion with dynamic editing options.
BrownBook Open Data Business Directory Video said
[...] first collected Added 23 Dec 08 from sandnsurf.wordpress.com Flag as inappropriate or [...]
» Brilliant coverage Brownbook.net - the free directory that anyone can edit, small business marketing, free marketing, free website said
[...] This one that I found via Twitter from @sandnsurf: http://sandnsurf.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/brownbook-business-directory/ [...]
Francesca A. said
This is a joke right? What legitimate business would pay to claim their own business listing? Don’t know how they get off doing this crap in U.K but it is wrong. Bad scenarios all around. Imagine a well established business having some jack ass edit their own information?! How can this be considered legitimate? I urge those with businesses to look up their information. If your information is there and someone is editing. causing damage to your business, band together and file a class action suit against Brownbook. Imagine having to pay to keep your own business name from being abused? Totally useless, manipulative, start-up Ponzi like website. To be kicked to the curb and then some!
Here’s my addition maybe I should pay to claim it? Brownbook email address, this is joke! :
Want to customize your page?
Business details
Somewhere where the sun don’t shine
work011-000-0000
askdumbquestions@brownbook.net
http://www.brownbook.net
Instant Messenger:
Business tags
how, to, shame, and, lose, your, company, information, any, psycho, can, edit
Location tags
uk, united kingdom
Francesca A. said
Notice how Brownbook advertises: The FREE directory that ANYONE can edit. Notice in caps, FREE and ANYONE: more like a free for all! Nothing free about having to claim your own business name that someone keeps getting paid to edit! Shameful.
Ben of AusMedWeb said
It certainly follows the trend of many directory publishers to give you a free entry but then provides an incentive to update. In this case a rather large incentive if the information people have put there is damaging to your business.
I’ve always wondered how many of these directories get the initial information – I’m sure they are scraping existing online directories. Is that ethical?
I wonder what the cost of participating in all these directories is for a large multinational business would be. Say 20 directories per country per year (some burning bright and fizzling out, others hoping to become “the” directory or just earn extra money from another web facing user editable database – ie very little actual work is required by the directory owner), yearly fees, time and effort of the marketing department etc.
Really though I think the target of these directories is mainly small business who look to promote themselves to a new untapped market. Some unfortunately won’t have the sophistication to tell which online properties are worthwhile and which aren’t. Does it reach the target audience? How many people use it to search? How does it compare to other available alternatives?
I suspect many small business owners adopt the approach of I’ll give it a go for a year and cancel if it is no good. Of course, from a purely SEO point of view another link doesn’t hurt so if it doesn’t cost anything why not!
World Business Directory. | 7Wins.eu said
[...] BrownBook Open Data Business Directory The 28-Hour-Day diet [...]
Dave Ingram said
Hi Francesca A., and thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts down, may I take a moment to respond to your points, because I think I can shed a little light?
We really are not the kind of people you paint us to be, we are real people, who’ve been small business owners ourselves, and who have put in a lot of time and effort into create something novel that REALLY does help businesses get found online.
Please hear me out a little, if you will.
The concept of wikis (anyone can edit) is now all over the web, and thats not a trend that can easily be reversed, but unlike most wikis (in fact include forums, blogs, and general websites in there too) we give the ability for a business owner to take control of their business listing and lock it down AND get alerted when other review or tag the listing.
More than that you do get a whole load more with your claimed listing than ANY OTHER online directory, including adding photos, videos, logos, any amount of marketing info, widgets (eg your skype button, or IM, or twitter account). Plus you can re-use elements of your Brownbook listing on your own site (like your reviews, and map to name two), so that directly helps small business improve their own web presence.
Your statement about people getting paid to change your listing is just incorrect, people who contribute only benefit if you decide that Brownbook is for you and you wish to claim your listing. No-one’s getting paid here to be a vandal.
On the subject of vandalism, we take this very seriously, and you may have noticed the ability for anyone to ‘report’ and listing, user, or review. We document (and follow) a clear policy for dealing with vandals, including correcting proven wrong info, suspending bad people, and even blocking vandals at the IP level. I think you really have to understand that we have invested A LOT of time and thought into handling abuse – we really are not the irresponsible people you thought we were.
On the question of value… if you take a look at what you get, you see that you get great SEO on all the major search engines, quite possibly bringing you business you may never have seen before. You get to present rather more than a plain listing, and therefore differentiate yourself from your competitors. Everything is designed to be self-service, we don’t have any on the road salesforce or telesales call centres, so unlike traditional directories you dont have to pay for our high overheads – oh, plus you get a lot more than you could ever do with any of the trad online (or paper) directories.
I do appreciate that doing things differently will always draw strong critics, and of course you are welcome to express your opinion. The technology today favors free expression – your own comments above are the embodiment of this. Thats a good thing.
Above all we’re decent people here, and we believe in civility, cordiality and respecting others.
Dave Ingram said
Hi Ben
Thanks for commenting, just a quick answer to your floating question… no we dont scrape other sites. We licensed the initial data sets for US, UK, CA, and AU, and everything since then is user created.
Regards
Dave