Over a year ago, there was some concern expressed that AboutUs was somehow invading privacy by posting information on domain owners. When Ray and others reminded everyone that this information was freely and publicly available elsewhere, and that the goal of AboutUs was to enable the addition of transformative value to it, the objections faded.
Even at that point, however, there were some people who understood why the combination of business information and the wiki form would produce value. Here’s one reader, VC Mike, who posted a comment on a rather critical Tech Crunch post.
(I)f the traffic trends are a harbinger these guys become the de facto wiki people go to for editing or viewing info on companies, this becomes the wiki version of Hoovers, which is something I would invest in.
Now, I mention this, and quote this individual, for a specific reason. As Guest Interloper, I’ve noticed something about these AboutUs types, something no one is going to miss who spends any time at all around them or on their site: This “wiki way of life†they espouse is big picture stuff all the way. They believe in the democracy of information and everything they do furthers that aim.
The problem of course is that they’re running a company, not a philosophy department. Sometimes it’s a little hard to see how this philosophical egalitarianism is going to benefit you, the user. So I wanted to help them articulate the answer to an important question, one that lay in plain site, but had not perhaps been sharpened like it could.
What does AboutUs do as a company? And what good does it do me?
Well, it turns out VC Mike had hit the nail on the head. AboutUs is an exhaustive listing of information about companies. This information includes officers, location, contact, sector and finances. It has in fact grown into a kind of Hoovers on a wiki, a sort of “Wiki & Poors†guide. Hoovers and Standard & Poors, for those who don’t know, are both guides to business information. They are updated, and published, originally in book form, and are used by investors, bankers, journalists, sales people, marketers, vendors and anyone else who needs to keep current on businesses and business sectors.
AboutUs provides you, the user, with immediate, up-to-date information on millions of companies around the world. Whether you’re considering investing, or buying products, or selling products to, a given company; whether you need to keep current on the players in a sector or need a current indication of how the economy is going for businesses in an area, you use AboutUs to find that information.
More than that, however. AboutUs has one important quality that traditional business information resources lack. It’s dynamic. You don’t just passively absorb information, as you might from the traditional business guides. At AboutUs you can discuss a given company or topic with other knowledgeable users. You can add information about a company that you’ve gained without waiting for a publication cycle, and you can read the same kind of information build into each entry by your counterparts.
AboutUs is the largest dynamic repository of business information in the world.
I wanted to make a Hoovers/Hoover joke. Something about a drape attachment. Perhaps next time.
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Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor
It was stated, “Aboutus is the largest dynamic repository of business information in the world.â€
It might be the largest, but how useful is it really for a person wanting to gain in-depth information about a company, such as trying to find the titles and names and contact information of key executives within a large corporation?
At Aboutus I typed “DuPont†in the search window, expecting to see search results similar to what I might see at Google or Hoovers, but I can make no sense of the search results, few if any even contain the name of “DuPontâ€. I think to myself, “this has no relevance to me, one trying to gain the mentioned information about a companyâ€.
Martin,
Good points. Currently, the site searches much better on domain names than company names, our plan is both to better connect the two so that company searches are more relevant and also to greatly increase the amount of information about each company. We’ll do this by adding more algorithmic data and by making it a lot easier for folks to edit the base information.
If aboutus is trying to position itself as a resource to “find out more about companies†(such as Hoovers), then it seems to me an important strategic question to ask is, “why do people seek information about a company?†People have different motives. For example one person might be interested in gathering statistical information, or perhaps market demand information. But there are other motives.
A good rule of thumb is that the larger the corporation, the more difficult it is to find out who within the company are the key decision makers, over this or that domain or project or division. Call some large corporation’s main switchboard and one will discover that often times the receptionist cannot tell you who is the corporation’s head of R&D, or head of this or that department – unless you provide them with the name (and even then sometimes they will not transfer you to this executive). One reason corporations have implemented such “we won’t tell you†policies is that they got tired of headhunters poaching their talent.
Want to do serious business with, or capture the interest of, a company? Your chances of success will increase if you first find out a lot about the company’s internal structure and internal politics – who is in charge of what, who are the key decision makers within, etc. As one that often has such motives, I currently do not view aboutus as a resource “to find out more about a company†– simply because this type of information does not exist at aboutus, or if it does it is too hard for me to find.
Many large corporations are today involved with technology, simply because we are a technology driven society. Thus key executives, such as in marketing or R&D departments are involved with strategic decisions revolving around technology and related business issues.
It seems that aboutus already has automated web crawlers or similar that go out in virtual space and automatically retrieve information, so it does not consume expensive human labor and time. What else could be automatically retrieved to help gain more valuable information about companies?
Automatically read patents that are recently filed by corporations, or previously awarded by corporations. In this way one discovers who are the key executives and inventors inside the company. At times corporations list an executive that is not really a technical inventor, as one of the inventive team, such as the VP of marketing. Then have the computer in some way remember these names.
Then have the computer automatically insert search terms in search engines like “Google†under terms like “director ofâ€, “Vice President of†R&D or innovation, or marketing. Also “Director of new businessâ€, and similar terms. Such terms often pull up press releases where a company executive is quoted. Have the software remembers such names as well.
Then automatically plug such names back into Google and make automation that filters out if any of these names are associated with a professional conference. Such executives are often attending or speakers at technical conferences.
These are just a few methods to gain more information about key people’s names and their positions. Then to in some way have the automation cross reference, for example a conference attendees name, to a patent databases list of inventors, and in this way one slowly builds up more information about the key person in the company, and their position and duties. But then still one does not have their key contact information. So also the automation, as it crawls and filters this information, is on the look out for email addresses and phone numbers. For example once a phone number prefix is known, one can add this to the last name in a search query, and at times the executive’s phone number will be revealed.
As part of my routine work I do such “tricks†all the time, and so know this is all very time consuming. I also suspect that a lot more of this type of work could be automated, because I notice that what I do has a pattern, meaning the particular input is different each time, but the process I go through is repetitive.
From some of my prior research work I also know that the USA intelligence community, and insurance companies, and banks, and large marketing companies have powerful computer systems that can do such finding and filtering, for their own internal needs – yet that automation horsepower is not available to us mere mortals – and as a result I still have to gain my information “about companies†the old fashioned way – lots of time and labor involved.
For example large corporation marketing departments subscribe to some new services that monitor all manner of internet social networking sites, and forums, and users groups and clubs to pick up the latest “buzzâ€, and trends – and that time of automation horsepower is simply not available to the masses when they try to gain “information about a companyâ€.
So as part of the aboutus service of making it more efficient and easier to gain information about companies, how about investing in automating such “finding and filtering†processes? I think that would put some really meaty information on some Wiki pages. For example I might then find a key executive and write him an email (now having his contact information), after which I might discover that the email address posted did not work, then perhaps do my own digging to find one that does (but already having this person’s name which was posted, which I did not have before). Thus I would be more willing to contribute my own time to make the correction on the Wiki page – whereas without some good initial information on the Wiki page, I would not engage the page in the first place.
One might argue that I am proposing exposing all sorts of key executives within corporations. In fact all the information I already gain is public information, it is just that it is scattered all over, so it takes me a long time to assemble all the pieces of the information puzzle today – and currently I don’t see aboutus doing anything to reduce my information gathering burden.
One might say, “Martin, if you have such juicy insider information about lots of companies (I do), why don’t you post it on Wiki pages?†It is because in our existing business environment there is still more competitive pressure than collaborative atmosphere. In other words what I know in such regard and others don’t, is for me a competitive advantage – so why should I reveal it? If I could see something of value in exchange for giving up my information and content, such as other corporate insider information I do not have, I could then see the benefit of giving up some of mine, in exchange for gaining another person’s. But again I simply don’t see this level of information at aboutus, so am not currently motivated to do such sharing or content contribution.
I don’t think I am an odd duck in such regard, suspecting that others with equally valuable corporate “insider” information would also hesitate to share it. As a result, the type of company information I currently find at Wiki pages I judge as superficial information having little if any business value.
I love these ideas about automation, Martin. The patents stuff is great!