A Revolution? Really?

Let me just say right off the bat that I don’t use the word ‘revolution’ lightly. Indeed, Seb and I have debated the question and, early on, even refrained from using the word ‘revolution’ on the web site and in our presentations to potential investors and partners. It’s one of those words that seems to hype more than define.

But now that we’ve been at this for over three years I think we can say with some authority that Search-To-Phone is revolutionary. Try it for yourself and let us know what you think. If you agree… then welcome to the revolution.

What makes it revolutionary? Two things:

First, Search-To-Phone inverts the usual way we search. Right now, you go to a web site, you type in a search query and the data is pulled from various sources and shows up on your screen in a nice, neat format. You then interact with the data you receive by reading the information and clicking on links or picking up your phone and dialing a number.

Rather than ‘pull’ data, Search-To-Phone ‘pushes’ your search query out the world, live. This invites the world (and by world I mean the businesses, merchants and local service providers who hear your query) to hear, qualify and scrutinize your search request. Instead of having advertising messages broadcast to you, you can broadcast an ‘advertisement’ of your specific needs and quickly find a live human being to help you. Therein lies revolutionary idea numero uno: personal broadcast.

Secondly, we believe that the small businesses that make up our customer base should have a choice as to when and how much of their advertising budget is spent. Yellow Pages ads, search engine marketing and even click-to-call technologies don’t offer this type of ‘rifle’ approach.

These search technologies (and in the case of Yellow Pages ads I use that term lightly) make a calculation… it looks like this:

CATEGORY + GENERAL LOCATION = A GOOD RESULT.

We believe that to match your specific search criteria faster and more accurately requires a better calculation. Something like:

CATEGORY (MINUS WRONG NUMBERS, BUSY SIGNALS, NO ANSWER) + YOUR EXACT LOCATION + YOUR SPECIFIC NEEDS + A MERCHANT’S INTELLIGENT SCRUTINY = A MUCH BETTER, FASTER RESULT.

Broadcasting your search requests to these small businesses gives them choice – more than just good business sense, choice makes for a better result.

So here ends self-serving blog post number one. Our hope is that this blog will become a public place for our customers to make suggestions and for us to gather much-needed feedback. So feel free to comment and all things Search-To-Phone.