THE OPERATOR DAILY: GRAYBOXX VS FRONT PORCH FORUM, OR CITY MOUSE VS COUNTRY MOUSE

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Michael Wood-Lewis with the Front Porch Forum, together with Peter Krasilovsky at the Local Onliner and perhaps others are pretty critical of Grayboxx's new offering unveiled in Burlington, Vermont.

Krasilovsky doesn't seem to have formed his own opinion on Grayboxx beyond saying that "it looks great." Krasilovsky does, however, give considerable play to Wood-Lewis' assessment, which can be summarized as "the results are pretty awful."

Wood-Lewis is most succinct when he writes "As a local, I haven't had one search produce what I would call 'good advice from a neighbor.'"

Two points come to mind.

First, while I am a firm believer in the evolution of a converged directory and search services (DSS) space--directory assistance, yellow pages, Internet search in the fixed and mobile environment--it seems a stretch to make a direct comparison between Grayboxx and Front Porch Forum. Grayboxx is about optimal relevancy, leveraged intelligence, and patented algorithms. Front Porch Forum is about helping neighbors connect and fostering community. These two are not "about" the same thing and I think it is more interesting to think of their respective differences as potential synergies rather than as respective deficiencies.

Second, as for the differences that arise from searching the two different services, I'm puzzled by Wood-Lewis' statement that "As a local, I haven’t had one search produce what I would call 'good advice from a neighbor.'” I think most of us would prefer good advice from anyone rather than bad advice from a neighbor.

Looking more closely at Wood-Lewis' first example, he seems to dispute Grayboxx's list of top jewelers: Fremeaus, Von Bargen, and Hannoush. While I don't know any jewelers in Burlington, Fremeaus and Von Bargen appear as numbers eight and nine on my Google search, and numbers five and six on my Yahoo! search. Fremeaus is number seven on 800-FREE-411. Perhaps Grayboxx isn't giving "good advice," but at a minimum, Grayboxx is in good company. (We tried to get Grayboxx to explain how their ranking is developed, but they wouldn't provide any specifics.)

We all know that some queries seek information that is readily and objectively verifiable, for instance, "Tony's home phone number." Other queries, such as a "good jeweler," are much more subjective and situational. One customer may prefer price over quality, and a "good" jeweler for a watch battery may be different from a good jeweler to repair an antique clock.

From the perspective of the people running these two services, Grayboxx looks like a business while Front Page Forum looks like a mission. From the perspective of information seekers, Grayboxx is fast and succinct, while Front Page Forum is a community experience. I think there is room for both.

3 Comments:

Blogger Michael Wood-Lewis said...

No argument here... plenty of room for these two very different services. Indeed, I like what Grayboxx is up to and hope they find success.

My remarks were sparked in part by their language... search results are boiled down to how many "neighbor recommendations" a business gets from Grayboxx's secret formula.

Front Porch Forum is all about helping nearby neighbors connect with each other, and they do that by sharing business recommendations, posting classifieds, reporting news, stating political views, crime watching, organizing events, etc... all with clearly identified nearby neighbors.

So, FPF deals with actual neighbor recommendations and Grayboxx's use of that term to describe their search results raises the level of expectations... "165 neighbors recommend the Wyndham hotel for catering in Burlington making it number one far and away in this category? Hmm... Which neighbors?"

August 31, 2007 at 10:04 PM  
Blogger Jagrmeister said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

September 2, 2007 at 1:30 AM  
Blogger Jagrmeister said...

>Grayboxx is about optimal relevancy, leveraged intelligence, and patented algorithms. Front Porch Forum is about helping neighbors connect and fostering community.

Stu,

You make a very relevant point here. The sites can co-exist as they offer different kinds of value to people.

>Looking more closely at Wood-Lewis' first example, he seems to dispute Grayboxx's list of top jewelers: Fremeaus, Von Bargen, and Hannoush. While I don't know any jewelers in Burlington, Fremeaus and Von Bargen appear as numbers eight and nine on my Google search, and numbers five and six on my Yahoo! search. Fremeaus is number seven on 800-FREE-411. Perhaps Grayboxx isn't giving "good advice," but at a minimum, Grayboxx is in good company.

Well said. We know we have work to do on the algorithm, but nothing stacks up well against perfection. Our view is that, given the dearth of feedback on sites like Yahoo Local and Yelp, especially in smaller towns, grayboxx can provide meaningful community input in several categories; where we can't, our results aren't terribly dissimilar from the competition. I hope Michael understands that Google has its own ranking algorithm for local that considers web references (as opposed to user data) for ordering businesses. We believe the user data we access is more relevant than the occasional web reference, which is often made in generic directories.

>From the perspective of the people running these two services, Grayboxx looks like a business while Front Page Forum looks like a mission. From the perspective of information seekers, Grayboxx is fast and succinct, while Front Page Forum is a community experience. I think there is room for both.

Couldn't have said it better myself. This is a very measured view on the market. We don't seek to compete with FrontPorch Forum; we'd like to work with people like Michael and link to sites like it. grayboxx offers a 'top candidates' list, and users can research more through the business' website, additional details like hours, user reviews we link to, and eventually sites with qualitative content.

Thanks again for your sober analysis on grayboxx and local.

-Bob

September 2, 2007 at 1:31 AM  

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