
Geolocalized Open Data for Marketers - laurentabbal
https://www.thedatapond.net
======
laurentabbal
Hi guys

I've already spent several weeks on this project and I've decided to launch
the website today even if it's not finished (beta version).

The idea is to continue the development according to feedback, comments and
advice. There are still 1000 things to do : design, typo, features, improve
lists...

What does the site offer? The idea is to offer users the ability to create
their own marketing lists and use them as they please. You can create as many
geolocalized open data lists as you want. You select a geographical area,
define parameters (categories, keywords ...) and the system extracts for you
downloadable data such as name, location, address, telephone number, website,
email address ...

Let's say you want to get a list of all the restaurants in Manhattan. When you
register, you receive 500 baits (a bait = a location detail such as name,
address, phone number, website ... if available) 1\. Create a "fishing
expedition" and define criteria (mainly category = restaurant) 2\. Create a
new pond (you will fish in this pond): With the drawing tool, create a line
around Manhattan. 3\. Click on "dig and fish" and you will know how many baits
you need to get all the data 4\. Then click on "fish them all!" and you will
have a list of all the restaurants and their available details (name, address,
telephone number, website...). This list can be downloaded as a 'csv' file
(you can open this file with Excel, LibreOffice, Google Sheets...)

Data from services such as Google Maps or Foursquare can not be used for
marketing or communication purposes. For example, the Google Maps Terms of
Service (3.2.4) states "Customer will not extract, export, scrape, or cache
Google Maps Content for use outside the Services". Data from The Data Pond are
under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).

The data you will get from The Data Pond are not as rich as data from services
like Google Maps or Foursquare but, at least, it is legal to use them.

If you have any comment or advice, do not hesitate. Shot.

~~~
manigandham
Some feedback:

1) It seems you're selling location details for businesses and other places of
interest? Make it extremely clear that this is not people. Also need much more
detail on the source, legality and quality of this data.

2) Remove the fish/pond/bait naming. It's not a game, and these terms and
descriptions just make it harder to understand and look unprofessional. Stick
with normal terms like credits/lists/locations, etc.

3) Location and geographic data is an extremely competitive field. You need to
figure out exactly who you're selling to and why. It seems you're going after
self-service individuals/small-businesses market. Beware that there will be
lots of unscrupulous and shady characters in this segment.

4) After the above, figure out your pricing and make it clear.

5) HN is not the best place to show this. Try some of the marketing forums and
chatrooms to get feedback.

~~~
lucasverra
I do not agree 2) & 3)

Maybe his way to be different is to use funny terms and gamify the experience.

OSM is very geeky and this _could_ be a new open door for many.

immediate reference : glitch.com . How not helpful would it be to follow your
recco ? (then again, the guys @ glitch are uber successful before glitch, so
they are more prone to "do whatever they want and just not fit the
traditional"

~~~
laurentabbal
2) Several people made this remark. Now, I do not know if I keep it that way
or if I do something more classic.

3) I'm learning. I am not used to the field of "marketing"

~~~
propogandist
Do you have a business problem you're solving with what you've built? If
you're new to marketing, what was the motivation behind creating this?

Generally, within marketing you need reliable data that can support audience
segmentation, market research, targeting or advertising.

The restaurant scenario may be good for a sales person, but they would want
more information like the owner/manager of the restaurant, details on foot
traffic etc. so they can 'size up' a target customer for a 'sales call'.

That said, bsed on the data quality disclaimers you noted, it seems the data
may not be practical for real world use-cases due to scraping restrictions.

~~~
laurentabbal
Duly noted. What do you mean by "for real world use-cases due to scraping
restrictions"?

------
NetToolKit
Neat idea! We recently stumbled upon the store information in OpenStreetMap
and have been trying to decide what we want to with it. I think there are
several interesting possibilities, but I'm mulling over whether they might be
commercially viable.

You might get some more feedback if you don't require registration to test out
your platform (I personally am not thrilled about creating yet another account
just to try something out). A compromise would be to allow users to enter the
query, and only see say, the top three results. In order to see the rest,
users could be required to register. That way, people can test out the flow of
the service before deciding whether to give you their email addresses.

I personally think your previous language of "bait" and such was cute. You
have a pond theme, and you could commit to it further by having graphics like
"fishing expedition" or a net to represent the catch. I'm not a marketer, so
it's quite possible that manigandham is right. Nevertheless, I suspect that a
single data point should not be enough to change your theming either way.

Hope that helps!

~~~
laurentabbal
Thanks! Many people were not convinced by the analogy with fishing. So I
changed the text to something more classic: projects / lists. Less fun but
more serious... If I have a time today, I will set up a demo that will not
require registration. Thanks for the advice.

~~~
NetToolKit
The demo is a little unclear. The instructions says to "Click [shape]" and I
think you should probably delete that, since I don't see the shape anywhere
else on the page. Starting with "Click where to start" is probably clear
enough, although I think you can clarify the language further.

After someone clicks the "delete selected shape" button, you should probably
resume the click-shape mode (with the crosshair cursor). It took we a while to
figure out how to start clicking the shape and that I need to refresh the page
if I want to restart.

Beyond that, I only got it to give me results when I specified a very small
area; my earlier attempts encountered a "too big" error. I would guess that
you are running into performance issues for larger areas, but limiting the
area too much makes the demo less impressive.

~~~
laurentabbal
Thanks. I will take into account these remarks.

------
antpls
Only by looking at the front page and the about page, I didn't understand how
one can earn "credit"/"bait". Also, if it's "Open Data", why does it require
credits to access it ?

~~~
laurentabbal
There are many things to improve. This is a beta. I'll try to do something
easier to understand. I am not used to the vocabulary of marketing. Any advice
is welcome.

------
laurentabbal
FYI, I've added a demo. No need to register to test the system now.
[https://www.thedatapond.net/new-demo](https://www.thedatapond.net/new-demo)

