We launched NSjobz.com last week and were pleasantly surprised by the user response. Despite the fact that we are in a relatively stagnant economy, we found that more employers than potential new hires clicked over to have a look at the new site. This is very encouraging for two reasons, the first and most obvious is because we get paid for “premium” job posts (the first post is free), but more importantly for everyone else, is that there are quality jobs to be had.

At NextStep we like to partner with companies providing outstanding services. We have been talking about building a job website from scratch since the beginning back in 2007, but in this case partnering with CareerEngine made more business sense. A pool of 50,000+ resumes, and a network of sites taking postings across multiple geographic areas in China; it is the perfect fit for delivering a quality service to the NextStep community.

If you haven’t been, go check it out. If you are looking for a job, go check it out. If you are looking to hire, go post a job, and give us your feedback here or at info@nsjobz.com

And if you are wondering why we chose a “z” instead of an “s”, very simple NSjobs wasn’t available, and we wanted to stay under 6 characters, since all of our other websites are incredibly long at 16 characters. We weren’t trying to be trendy and cool, it was just the least expensive option at GoDaddy.

So Ed Kim sent me a tweetpic just now of an American Airline advertisement from a New York City billboard located in lower Manhattan.

I will keep this post short and simple. The text that is difficult to read says “The most first and business class seats to LA.”

First, business class and first class is meant to be exclusive. This ad completely kills the exclusivity element of flying in plush leather seats with flight attendants waiting on your every beckoning call as you make the 5 hour flight from NYC to LAX. Second, I just flew from SFO to LAX on AA last week, and enjoyed the in-flight Wifi for $5.95. I have a new ad idea for you AA. It goes something like this “$6 - Coast-to-Coast Wifi”.

People want connectivity 24/7. AA please let them know you have it. Every airline has the “most” first class seats, not everybody has Wifi today, so use it to differentiate yourself. If an AA rep reads this, please also see to it that you put outlets at every seat so when my Macbook runs out of juice, I can plug it in and continue to get my $5.95 worth of wifi.

Please also note that NextStep has attempted on more than one occasion to get AA as an advertiser for an annual contract at a price point much lower than what it would cost to design the poor ad above and keep it posted in the outdoor advertising space in lower Manhattan for one week. It is tough to change the mind-set of dinosaurs.

So as the war rages on in the United States to fix the most broken health care system in the developed world, two American educated entrepreneurs steam ahead building the Expedia of health care portals for China, Meiloo.com. With 280,000 unique visitors just last month, Meiloo is marching to a new tune for getting the most out of the health care system.

Currently focused on elective treatments, Meiloo.com has solid revenue models through percentages of all surgeries and consultations booked through their platform. Obviously there are some potential holes here, but a good start in a $9billion a year business in China.

So the question we have to ask ourselves, will the answer to our health care issues in China, the US and across the world be answered by the best and brightest entrepreneurs who seek profit by caring for the tired, the sick, and the huddled masses? Or should we not leave it in the hands of small and big business, as we have seen the shortcomings in the US over the past thirty-five years?

Please leave your thoughts and ideas here.

It was only a matter of time before the authorities decided to crack down on Facebook. Finally they have also become tired of the never ending event notifications, status updates discussing your “friend’s” decision to go to M1NT or Bar Rouge this weekend, and the random friend requests. In all seriousness the authorities control over the “web waves” is a cause for concern. But, let’s be honest, it is more of an annoyance than anything. Stack it on top of the typical day of blazing internet speeds, and it is sure to upset expat web users.

This is not meant to be a political post, as an outsider I do not want to delve into the internal political decisions of a soveriegn nation.

I use Facebook and Twitter everyday for both work and personal use. I try not to be “spammy” on either. Some friends take me aside and ask me not to post so much, but honestly I tell them I am posting interesting current events and business articles they should be looking at. Granted most of the people that are taking me aside, don’t really understand how to use Facebook and Twitter to effectively “share” information, but they are coming around.

Yes I do post NextStep event information, but they are good informational events, not another party on the Bund. The majority of my postings point people to great current events like this article, this article and this article (oh, wait I cannot pull the links from my Facebook profile to share with you right now…I need to start bookmarking them again on my Webdexer.com)

If you want to find out more about me, you can click here to view my NextStepDirectory.com profile.  From there you can check out my Linkedin and Twitter (once it is running again).

The best business directory in China, or at least we think so can be found at www.NextStepDirectory.com

Here you can find answers to your many business service questions. Looking for an accountant, a logistics manager, or a graphic designer? Find all this plus more. In the coming weeks we will be launching some new features that will enable our users (for FREE) to get quotes from multiple service providers with one push of the button.

Tell me what you think about our new tagline…”NextStep Changing the way you interact with a directory.”

 You ask, how can you possibly interact with a directory? Well I will let you find out about by exploring the comments, rating, and announcement section of the directory. Let your voice be heard and find out how you can take advantage of our ever-growing directory.

 If you have any comments or suggestions on the directory please let me know

joseph DOT constanty AT nextstepdirectory DOT com

This is really really embarrassing.  Today at the NextStep offices we had six US university interns brainstorming over different feature sets for the NextStep Directory.  One of the key value added attributes of the NSD are the company profiles and surveys.  NONE OF THE INTERNS KNEW THE COMPANY SURVEYS EXISTED!  There reasoning is that after clicking on a category, the information displayed looked like most other directories so they didn’t realize they could click on each company to find out all the additional information.  I was left speechless when Joe told me and asked the interns myself to make sure.  This is a clear case of the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ and why its so important to get outside opinions.  Hopefully, someone will read this and avoid making the same mistake.

A confusing turn of events over the past week that now has the Hong Kong American Chamber of Commerce spearheading the movement to get the US a pavillion at the 2010 World Expo. Am I the only one wondering why the HK Amcham is taking the lead on this matter? I know the Shanghai Amhcam has been working on this in coordination with the Beijing chamber for the past year, but to no avail. This really is a matter of American corporations coming together for the mutual good of our future face as business managers and owners in the China landscape. It will be an embarasment if we do not have a pavillion. This is now the second time I am petitioning for all American business owners to write your Senators and Reps, get them to make an initiative from the states. I don’t need to pull out a calculator to tell you that the money needed for the pavilion project is peanuts compared to the financial meltdown war chest that has been opened over the past 5-1/2 months. If you are reading this and you are American and you are a business owner, and you have not yet written your officials in Washington, then open your mailbox and get writing today! See a previous post for a quick copy and paste email text body.

Something for all business owners to think about is how they position themselves in the marketplace. I am not talking strictly from a branding and marketing point of view, but I am talking about your physical location. A great for instance is an old project of mine,Lucky Greens Mini Golf (yes back in the day I thought I could become the mini golf king of the Middle Kingdom).

Here was the problem, we knew that our first wave of customers, our low hanging fruit would be expat families, but we also knew that our second wave of customers would come from the growing middle class families of Shanghai. If you are keen to the Shanghai geography and demographic layout, you will quickly identify the dilemma we faced. Where to place the mini golf facility?

Well, we opted for the monstrous Cloud Nine Mall adjacent to Zhong Shan Park. This was to become the “new center” of Shanghai. For long term growth it was brilliant. It was at the intersection of three major metro lines, over twenty bus lines, and dozens of apartment complexes within a ten minute walk. But, it wasn’t convenient for our low hanging fruits. The expats were living far off in the hinterlands of MinHang or JinQiao in Pudong. We heard it from day one from these customers, “if you had just put it out by our home in JiQiao we would come every weekend”, “why did you put it here?”

So we were stuck between a rock and hard place. We had already put all of  our investment into this location with the intention of opening the second location in one of these expat compounds. Where we went wrong was creating a “destination-location” that could not easily be accessed by our first wave of customers, the expat-base. We closed up shop on Valentines Day 2007.

I see the same mistakes being made over and over again. Let’s have a look at Dunkin’ Donuts recent entry into Shanghai. Dowtown locations, perfect for the business crowd. But the locations they have chosen are just out of that 5-10min walking radius most office workers are willing to forgoe during lunch-breaks or smoke breaks. There business is most definitely not flourishing like they had presumed. Some of you may remeber “Frankies Italian Restuarant” on Fenyang Lu. One block off of Nanjing or Beijing Lu, but a million miles away from walk-by traffic.

Then there are places like “Pier 39″, just below my office on JinXian Lu (probably never heard of this small street), but the business is booming in this mini-cafe, becuase it sits on a street with a mix of dining and shopping experiences. It is a “known” destination, and gets considerable walk-by traffic. After two or so months of operation, you cannot reserve a table on Friday and Saturday nights.

Moral to this story is NOT location, location, location. But, IS first learn what type of location your business needs to be in, and then seek out the real estate to assist your business in becoming that location.

Wen Jia Bao and his closest advisers are in Davos, and by all accounts it sounds as if some in media are beginning to take a more relaxed stance on China. To be honest it speaks of the times we now live in. If one day you condone the actions of a nation state, and the following you pride them for their economic achievements so that you may benefit, it makes you as a profession or nation look quite pathetic. If you have a stance and belief, keep it, please don’t peddle a flip-flopping opinions that are delivered as fact. For too long the western media and government has and still remains to look negatively upon China, and rightfully so on many levels, but what they have so conveniently left out of the stories in recent years is how they have benefited from China’s monumental rise.

Look at the facts of information decemination. It is only in the past eighteen months that media has latched onto the debt obligations the US now holds with the Near East. When times got rough and it was no longer to our (US and European) advantage to continue selling our debt at the rapid rate we had no problem with at the onset of this decade, the media and US government started speaking up. We got ourselves into this situation, and it will take a community effort to etract ourselves from this mountain of debt and trade imbalance. The answer is not confrontation and protectionist policies. The answer lies in cooperation between China-US-UK-Euro to fix what has gone so wrong.

As I spend a good percentage of my day tearing through information about directories and Yellow Pages, I happened upon this article from Mobile Marketer quoting the President of Yellow Pages Association. I never knew such an assoication existed.

Whether it is mobile or online, the biggest problem that I see as the co-founder of NextStepDrectory.com is that Yellow Pages and even search engine results do not give enough qualified information. If you look at most Yellow Pages, they simply take the paper version and drop it on your 22 inch monitor, they don’t take advantage of what the web offers as a community space. Yes they put some maps in there, but that is about as far as it gets. We see directories as information portals that are dynamic and “alive” with user comments, uploads, ratings, maps, mobile and more. Yellow Pages isn’t doing it, and neither are the search engines. Yes, Yellow Pages has maps, and Google search has its new “experimental” project that allows users to use a search engine result page (when logged into their google account) like a wiki. An interesting development from a company who relies on mathematical formulas to drive you search results, as it looks like they are dipping their feet into the power of “crowd sourcing” search results.

Yelp.com does it for restaurants, and some travel websites provide such services for their niche market, but there does exist a common depository for business services online.

The question is what do people what to find when they search for a company or service online or offline through a personal referral?

Our answer is simple

1. Reliable and qualified information ( a trusted third party)

2. Multiple  references (i.e. online comments and ratings)

3.Quick competition check (side by-side matrix)

4. The externals, like driving directions, maps, pictures, and videos.

We ask for all or most of this in the offline world of our business referalls, but little exists online. And if you have a look at the Mobile Marketer article mentioned above, you will see that the Yellow Pages Association is worried more about the advertisement revenue than the delivery of a complete service pacakage to the end user.

What do you want to know when you are looking for a service provider? If you are too shy to share it here please do not hesitate to contact me at joseph DOT constanty AT nextstepdirectory DOT com