So NextStep co-founder, Edward Kim, is up to something new these days in New York City. Simple.PR is his newest creation and he is focusing on the power of the local web. All too often small companies; restaurants, service providers, theatres, etc are left with few if any ways of publicizing their “news”.

Typical news wires are just too big for these small fish, and a classifieds ad can get lost in the mix. Ed’s simple concept is to provide a service where “local” companies can distribute their news to “local” media. The companies need the exposure, and the media need access to stories — intersecting at Simple.PR.

Ed and his team, including the Scott Ballantyne here in Shanghai, have built the first application for the concept that connect Twitter accounts to the Simple.PR platform by incorporating a basic #pr or #simplepr to pool together all the chatter about companies and their news.

From there they will build a host of applications and services. Check out the site and show your support. The project is currently focused on the US, but there is no stopping you from using it for Shanghai and beyond.

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.

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).

Across my Tweetdeck came a message, “rumors Apple puts offer up for Twitter”. Now if I were @biz stone and the gang over in Twitter-world I would be putting my company on the auction block. The hype behind twitter today is nothing less than amazing — CNN, NYTimes, celebrities–all hyping Twitter as  the best thing since sliced bread.

It is great, it is informative, and it has a lot of room for growth opportunities. But remember this folks, pigs get slaughtered!

If the money is on the table and it is a fair value for the company — take it. I love taking risk, but this is like looking a gift horse in the mouth. My three reasons to sell today-

1. The hype will fade before a monetization model is produced. Have a look at Yammer.com. They have already figured out how to monetize the Twitter interface, and they have beat Twitter to the game.

2. It’s like Allstate Insurance, “Your in good hands with” Apple & Google

 3. I must repeat…Pigs Get Slaughtered!

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.

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.

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

A French Consulting firm, FaberNovel, just released an impressive report titled “Everything you always wanted to know about Google…”. They made different versions of the report in english, but also made a short slide version in english and in french.

It is a very good overview of how Google become what it is today.

Several good questions have been pointed out, such as :

- Why won’t Google be affected by crisis ?

- Why does Microsoft fear Google ?

- How Google wants to compete with Facebook ?

- Why doesn’t Google monetize all its services ?

- How does Google turn advertising into information and performance ?

And for me the best slide being :

- How does Google buy traffic ?

Where we can understand that because Google is financing 85% of Firefox, we can find Google search engine embedded in Firefox browser or other type of deal with Dell, Apple, ….

You can also read the review made by TechCrunch.

Technorati Profile

So, the US Federal Reserve stepped up to the plate today and guaranteed lenders $800 billion to secure more of the bad debt the banks took on over the past 36 months or so, as reported by Bloomberg. With this move, what the Fed is asking the banks to do is to keep lending or lend even more money than before. This is just the opposite of what human psychology would tell a logical bank manager to do. The banks have have lost the house and their kitchen sink too over the past 12 months, and now the Fed wants to get them out their making more loans. Yes, healthy businesses need money to sure up cash-flow problems, but is an $800 billion bailout the way to go?I see it as the Fed asking the banks to do something completely irrational. It is in the banks’ best interest at this point in time to lock down the ship and take count of everything they have (and don’t have). With this Fed structuring the banks are about to walk down another slippery slope, and so is the Fed. If the banks fail to take this money as a tool to revive the credit markets it will highlight general market weakness and lack of faith in the system. If they take the Fed cash reserves, irrationality is abound again in the credit markets. Take note that $200 billion is being set aside for consumer loans, i.e. bad credit card debt–user beware.