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.

We are very proud that M1NT Shanghai decided to write a quick notes about our NextStep Event on Nov 18th.

Here is what they said :

“NextStep provides a forum for like-minded entrepreneurs to collaborate in building new businesses and also helping one another navigate the many pitfalls of conducting business in China. NextStep every second Tuesday holds net working event at various venues around Shanghai. The event is designed to keep conversation casual, and the bonus is that a majority of the people attending are like-minded entrepreneurs.

On November 18th, NextStep held the regular net working event in M1NT Shanghai; give their members an exclusive look at this members only club to dream big with like-minded entrepreneurs. The founder of M1NT Alistair Paton has brought a unique concept to partying for the fabulously wealthy; party-goers are making money as they party as shareholders in the club.

More information about the event, please check
http://www.nextstepshanghai.com/”

More on http://www.m1ntnews.com

Thanks to M1NT Shanghai for the great event, and thanks to the 260+ people who joined us that night.

So I am not announcing any new news here, but something dawned on me today. Social Networking Sites are starting to become their own Treasury Departments of sorts. Let’s look at the recent failed deal between Facebook and Twitter, two SNS giants. Facebook attempted to buy Twitter for $500 million in Fb stock at the valuation given to Fb by Microsoft’s earlier $400mil+ investment. Twitter walked away fromt the deal believing that Fb was overvalued by Microsoft.

This has to be one of the craziest times in modern history for mergers & acquisitions simply based upon the transition of one unprofitable company’s stock to another as currency for assets. Fb is becoming the treasury and the bank all in one. It is pure genius. Here they are able to print Facebook bucks to buy Twitter “so-called” assets on the hope that one day one of these services will make some serious cash. To me this looks like the blind leading the blind. I am not a researcher myself, so I have no idea as to the precedent for similar deals between companies that have no revenue streams or maintain revenue streams that are weak at best, but this one surely must take the star of the show.

Check out this article from forbes.  I’ve selected a few quotes that I thought were great.

“Whether China’s second-richest individual suffers a fall is in the country’s leaders’ hands. Detained by authorities on suspicion of stock manipulation, Huang Guangyu is powerful enough that a decision on his fate requires approval from the top.” 

“It will be more serious only if Beijing authorities want him to go down,” said one Hong Kong-based analyst who asked to remain unidentified because of company policy.” 

“The Mingpao report said that any charges brought against Huang will need to be personally cleared by Premier Wen Jiabao.”

I’m still in New York and let me tell you, times are tough.  We’ve gotten to the point where the government is starting to talk about bailing out Citigroup!  Wow.  Of course everyone around the world is feeling the effects of this economy, even in Shanghai.  Luckily, I have access to this site you may have heard of called the NextStep Directory.  I can also see what people in Shanghai are searching for with regards to business services, and for the first time, headhunters is the most popular category.  (Since launching, graphic/web design has consistently been held its place at the top.)  Here is a record of the last few months for this category:

November: 1st (most popular category)

October: 2nd

September: 2nd

August: 4th

July: 7th   

The numbers don’t lie.  Expats in Shanghai are feeling their share of this economic crisis.   

Whispers from Beijing and now the China Daily confirm that the threshold for taxable income may rise to as high as 8,000 RMB. It doesn’t take a genius to see what is going on here. It is a fantastic opportunity for the government to get a better measurement of the true wages of it’s nation’s workforce. What do I mean, you ask? Simple, too many companies pay salaries in cash and do not report, or what they are reporting is far below actual income. The government can step in at a “time of great need” to free up some disposable income to push forward consumer spending on everything from mobile phones to new furniture to keep the domestic economy humming. Long term, with more companies willing to show their “real numbers” so as to realize their own reduced tax obligations today, the government will have access to a truer sense of the economy and the future ability to come back and start taking more taxable income from the working man and corporation. Give up a penny today for a dollar tomorrow, genius!

It might not be a bad idea to call up an accountant to see what this means for your company. If you don’t have an accountant to answer these question, well you can always find one at NextStepDirectory.com/accounting

After speaking with some business owners based out of Hangzhou last evening at the NextStep Tuesday at M1NT it appears from a cursory discussion that not enough attention is being paid to smaller tier one and tier two cities. As I am off to GuangZhou today to learn more about the web community in GZ and HK, my eyes have been opened to the smaller communities who are looking for resources to make connections and grow businesses in China. This also plays right into the direction of NextStepDirectory.com ’s growth for China–move on to Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou and beyond.

Some raw numbers that I was given last night speak of a mere 9000 foreigners working in Hangzhou of which no strong community of business owners have focused around. Obviously this community needs to be built up. If you are interested in talking to me about doing more NextStep focused events in your Chinese city feel free to send me an email or comment here.  joseph (DOT) constanty (AT) nextstepdirectory (DOT) com

Again, I would like to thank Frank Phillipe of M1NT for giving us such a great venue last evening. The M1NT team is on to something quite interesting for the Chinese marketplace, and I am interested to see where the Shanghai and future Beijing endeavors take them.

Big business has been doing it for years, but the mom and pop shops of less than 500 employees have still yet to get on the band wagon of outsourcing professional services. The biggest barrier to entry for small companies, in my opinion, is there lack of resources dedicated to finding new partners and companies to handle outsourced tasks. Small companies do not have the means to find reliable partners. Obviously they could always pick up a phone book or search the world wide web, but the results typically do not come with an outside opinion and position on a particular company’s ability or inability to provide services at a level they say they are able to. With nothing in hand, what is a small business owner/manager to do in economic times where only the most thrifty will survive.

This article in the ecommercetimes enforced my belief in why a tool like the NextStepDirectory, of which I am a co-founder, really needs to exist–abundant and reliable business information at your finger tips.

It is time for SMEs to really take a hard look at their bottom line, and figure out how they are going to squeeze every last unit of productivity out of the inputs to their final service. Outsourcing and finding new service providers outside one’s personal business network may be the first step in the right direction