
Yext Offers Local Businesses A Smart Inbox For Phone Calls - auston
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-yext-offers-local-businesses-a-smart-inbox-for-phone-calls/
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javery
"Ultimately the analysis of the phone calls helps Yext make their flagship
product, the local business search engine which they claim gets visited by
over a million users a month, more detailed for visitors and at the same time
more effective for listed companies."

Why does Compete.com say ~70k visitors a month
(<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/yext.com/>) and QuantCast says 55.8k
visitors a month (<http://www.quantcast.com/yext.com>)?

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ashishk
they do other sites too, like gymticket.com. maybe someone could do a reverse
domain lookup on their ip

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pg
I couldn't understand what they were doing during the presentation, but the
founders explained afterward and it seems pretty impressive.

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riffer
At first I thought the point in the Q&A where the Yext front man said "Yeah, I
just told you" to PG reflected poor manners.

<http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2163590> \- 13:15

Then I went back and I realized that PG was repeatedly probing to figure out
which part of this guy's business was most important to him, and he wasn't
going for it.

Smart guy.

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n8agrin
Yext does seem pretty useful for a small business that is getting a lot of
calls and perhaps doesn't have a person able to triage the calls. Perhaps they
will win, though I'm not convinced. They seem to have setup a big hurdle
they'll have to get over that we in the tech-web bubble like to forget; namely
that not everyone in the world is so web and computer focused, especially in
the market they are after. In fact I believe the Yext presenter stated himself
that the businesses they talked to preferred receiving phone calls when
obtaining business. So maybe their solution will work for many businesses, or
maybe the speech => text won't be good enough and it will be another annoyance
that a pen and pad of paper can solve just as well.

Why do you think it will win?

An aside about tc50 in general:

I feel like a lot of the products I saw today were taking shots in the dark,
and trying to solve problems they felt the need to convince the audience
existed. I didn't feel that there was a lot of innovation or the sensation
that the software / products demoed would really make my life or others lives
better. It felt more like the presenters were taking problems that have
already been solved outside of the web and trying to bridge the gap between
the current solutions and online solutions. That's not to say doing so they
won't be successful, but it did leave me feeling constantly disappointed, like
I was being sold a bill of goods while having someone yelling at me about how
my life will be so much better by using their service. I should add 1) I
didn't watch every presentation and 2) I think I've been having a bad day so
maybe it's just rubbing off on watching the demos.

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auston
(Not to put anyone down) I agree with you about the demos, except Yext.

I believe they hold promise - outside of their core "local search" business,
if they port some additional/basic features of crm's into their app I believe
they would be head & shoulders above pretty much everyone doing crm/contact
management.

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defen
Yext looks great, but you do realize there are about 24 companies which will
be presenting tomorrow, right?

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auston
Most definitely. So far, they've enamored me.

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gojomo
The original TC headline ("TC50: Yext Offers Local Businesses A Smart Inbox
For Phone Calls") was more informative than the submitter's personal opinion
about a tradeshow prize ("I think Yext will/should win TechCrunch 50").

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fjabre
Hate to rain on the parade but I don't see this going anywhere unless they use
humans to transcribe the phone calls which presents privacy issues. Speech rec
simply isn't there yet.

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smokinn
Are you sure about that? Google voice's speech recognition is apparently very
impressive.

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rufo
That couldn't be farther from my experience - for me, the automated
transcriptions are impressive in speed alone. They're usually so far off as to
only give a vague impression (often wrong) of what they called about.

It's good as a constantly fresh source of amusement, I suppose. :-)

