MetroSEEQ

A lot of people have been contacting me about how cool Urbanspoon’s iPhone application is. Yes, it’s pretty cool and I wish I had a team to work on a cool iPhone app too to boost my coolness factor. I have several ideas but they are more practical than they are for entertainment purposes. If you want entertainment, check out the Wheel of Meal on MetroSEEQ. Now, that’s a piece of sophisticated piece of code that is far more advanced than Crazym_nus. Take a spin, you’ll know what i mean, and remember to turn the sound on too.

Okay, so why have not worked on mobile app yet? Well, the 1st reason is, I just don’t have the developers who have spare time to do it. 2nd reason is I don’t have 31 million venture money like YELP to do whatever they please. 3rd, the focus of the company is deals and coupons and there are just too many obstacles mobile coupon to be a reality now. Here are 5 reasons

1. Compatibility - too many carriers and too many devices to check phone compatibility. In short, if the world only uses iPhone and AT&T, i’d jump on it.

2. Lack of variety - critical mass hasn’t been reached for these coupons to be useful yet.

3. Lack of design depth - most advertisers haven’t started designing for mobile yet.

4. Interface/algorithm - it’s hard to come up with an interface and algorithm that will deliver you the coupon you need, when you need it

5. Hard to target - not only is tracking consumer on GPS a political issue.  There’s just not a filtering system to send you the relevant coupons yet.  In my view, I think this will have to be proactive than passive on the consumer part to acquire the coupons they want… otherwise targeting is just too difficult.

6: Optical barcode scanner not powerful enough - U.S. standard of barcode is somehow less powerful than Japan’s… that’s why they can do it first and we still have an infrastructure problem to overcome.

I think mobile coupons will happen someday. According to the reuters article I posted earlier, 77% of the consumers between ages 18-34 said they are likely to use coupons if given access to paperless technology.  77%!  That’s a pretty sure bet there if you’re a gambler.  I also suspect the number will grow given the bad state of economy, everyone is looking for a deal these days.

SmallTown.com plans to grows its national presence by partnering up with webcards.com, an advertising platform that enables small and medium size businesses to manage their online presence across the internet without having to reproduce multiple campaigns in different formats on different platforms.

Attracted by the strategy, Nick Ordon, formally CEO of the venture-backed firm Grayboxx and Infotone joins as CEO and President.  Robert Goldberg, board member and investor of local companies including insiderpages (sold to Citysearch recently) joins Smalltown’s board to capitalize on the opportunity.

Here’s my question, have these local companies actually stepped into a mom and pop place whose owners or managers are skeptical of online advertising?  Over 80% of local businesses are small operations across the country and I can assure you, most do not know about online advertising management that webcards wants to accomplish.  Also, keep in mind local shops in the Silicon Valley should not be used as a benchmark for the rest of the country.  I grew up in the Bay Area and now living in Portland, OR, the gap between technology familiarity is just too obvious.  I will give you several reasons why it’s not realistic to expect small business in the rest of the country to hop on the Webcards bandwagon:

1. - They still don’t know how to run a google adwords campaign
2. - They cannot see where their digital advertising go.  (when they can’t see it, it doesn’t really count)
3. - Keyword bidding can get expensive per click.  (forget about asking them to keep track of ROI online, they don’t have time or the know how to set it up)
4. - They know about click fraud and review fraud but rather go with tangible methods they are familiar with such as yellowpages (its sad), direct mailers, and couopon books even though the audience in print is waning.

Yes, consolidating and managing in a single platform is good, but only in select metros where technology penetration is deep.  To win the rest of the county, the barrier has to be even lower… to FREE.  Having worked in the restaurant industry, FREE is their favorite word.  They will do anything that’s free.  Craiglist is free to post, and now metroseeq is free to post - just click on “Add Deal” upon finding your store.

Bottom line - we ought to create technology that adapts to people, not the other way around if you’re thinking big.

I read in couple of places about Menupages’ rumored acquisition.  Analysis of the buyer are detailed in the CNET article.  Here’s the short list in the order :

1. IAC/InterActiveCorp

2. AOL

3. Yahoo Local

4. Google

With IAC being the most likely candidate according to Compete.com

What’s puzzling to me is why IAC would sell Entertainment.com (the big coupon book) in the first place and now wanting to acquire Menupages?  True Menupages is very popular in NYC, but does it have a strong influence outside of it?  Maybe it’s just geo play?

Rumored at $200 million, yelp - a restaurant centric review site now makes $10 million/year.

It’s 4 rounds of fundings are

Round 1: Max Levchin: $1 million, Summer 2004:

Round 2: Bessemer Venture Partners: $5 million, Q4 2005

Round 3: Benchmark Capital: $10 million, Q4 2006)

Round 4 (this round): $15 million, Q3, 2008

A friend of mine sent me an article on Reuters yesterday about how in the economic downtown, 67% plan for coupon use.

It’s a long article with lots of numbers, here it is i more readible form:

ICOM Survey breakdown: www.i-com.com

Age

18-34 yr old - 71%

35-54 yr old - 68%

55+              - 63%

Geography

Midwest - 70%

West - 69%

North East - 64%

South - 62%

Annual Income

<50K - 68%

>50K - 67%

Coupon Technology

58% of consumers responding to the ICOM survey see their coupon use increasing if they could download a coupon from
the Internet and have it automatically connected to an electronically swiped frequent shopper card.

> 77% of consumers in the 18-34 age group said they are much
more likely or somewhat more likely to use coupons if given access to this
paperless technology

63% in the 34-54 age group
47% in the 55+ age group

Conclusion: Everyone likes a good deal