Loconomy - a novel idea for local search
In my last post, I spoke about the local search players in India.
All of them have their on niches, some integrate well with maps, some have a very smart search - but to me they are all somewhat equal, especially in the experience a user goes through.
A few weeks back an ex-colleague & friend from Yahoo (Jignashu) pointed me to loconomy, and asked me to play with it. First 2 minutes, I could not figure out "whats special". Then he asked me to try searching for idiyappam in all local search engines & then try it on loconomy.
Well, I dont quite remember what idiyappam is, but I tried the search and sure enough there were matches on loconomy and Jignashu pointed out - they index the catalogue of the various businesses that they index, and now also have a "Famous for" field for each business.
Thats a novel idea: its simple, and very powerful.
For once I dont have to ask my friends - "where can i get pav bhaji around koramangala" : loconomy answers that for me.
Its not just food, where they index catalogues. Try "root canal".
While they have a long way to go and need to do a lot more - especially in terms of distribution - mobile interface(SMS, voice). I was impressed with the simplicity of the idea, hence the entire post for them.
I hear that 1 of the founders is an ex-Yahoo! as well. Quite a few ex-yahoo's starting up.
Should do another post about that :)
All of them have their on niches, some integrate well with maps, some have a very smart search - but to me they are all somewhat equal, especially in the experience a user goes through.
A few weeks back an ex-colleague & friend from Yahoo (Jignashu) pointed me to loconomy, and asked me to play with it. First 2 minutes, I could not figure out "whats special". Then he asked me to try searching for idiyappam in all local search engines & then try it on loconomy.
Well, I dont quite remember what idiyappam is, but I tried the search and sure enough there were matches on loconomy and Jignashu pointed out - they index the catalogue of the various businesses that they index, and now also have a "Famous for" field for each business.
Thats a novel idea: its simple, and very powerful.
For once I dont have to ask my friends - "where can i get pav bhaji around koramangala" : loconomy answers that for me.
Its not just food, where they index catalogues. Try "root canal".
While they have a long way to go and need to do a lot more - especially in terms of distribution - mobile interface(SMS, voice). I was impressed with the simplicity of the idea, hence the entire post for them.
I hear that 1 of the founders is an ex-Yahoo! as well. Quite a few ex-yahoo's starting up.
Should do another post about that :)