Archive for October, 2005

OnOneMap

October 28, 2005 at 3:40 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Wow… now this is REALLY REALLY GOOD..!! 

This new website (OnOneMap) has completely blown me apart! All the properties in the UK on one map!! Including Rightmove, Fish4, Propertyfinder, Foxtons, etc..  you name it, they are all there!

It
is by far the best Google Maps mashup that exists and I am delighted to
even find my parents property on the map. The property is for sale in
Bournemouth and the information is correctly displayed under two estate
agents with no ovelapping data. These guys have done an excellent job.
Congratulations!!

Now the bad news… the problem with
OnOneMap is the fact that there is no business model behind and all the
data displayed is owned by a few big consolidate players. If OnOneMap
becomes too popular, the data provides might not be happy loosing
strategic control of their web users to OnOneMap and therefore remove
their properties! Lets hope not, time will tell…

In the mean
time, I hope Google launches the maps and geocoding for Spain and other
countries so that we can improve our mashup too. The same message goes
for MSN VirtualEarth, we don’t have preference which API we use!

Update: We now have our own ADOOS GOOGLE MAPS MASHUP

Ononemap

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ADOOS

October 26, 2005 at 2:10 am · Filed under Uncategorized

Today we have two important news!!

1) We are changing names from Habitamos to ADOOS, and
2) We are launching our service in 11 new countries!!

Europe:
UK, France, Germany and Italy

Latin America:
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Mexico, Perú and Uruguay.

This is our new logo:

Adooslogobig

We have decided to change names to something easier and shorter: Adoos.
What does Adoos mean? Nothing really (sorry to disappoint), its simply
a word I like the sound of and nowadays finding a suitable domain name
internationally is a really hard task!

We have been working like crazy over the past 6 month but please note that the new sites are still in alpha
version. I usually prefer to launch as soon as possible and then go
tweaking the code with the feedback from the users. Apologies, for any
bugs, translation errors or geographic errors. Let us know what is
wrong and we will fix it ASAP!

This should keep us busy for a long long time…. ;-)

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Business Model Options

October 26, 2005 at 1:53 am · Filed under Uncategorized

Essentially, there are various charging models for online classifieds:

1) no ad/listing charge but contextual advertising, agregator (e.g. Indeed, Oodle)
2) no ad/listing charge but contextual advertising, CL type  (e.g. Adoos, Vivastreet)
3) fee for posting an ad/listing (Ebay, Monster, Loot, Infojobs)
4) monthly subscription fee (Labx, Idealista, Rightmove)
5) fee for enhanced membership services (Alibaba)
6) transaction fee (Ebay)
7) cost-per-lead (Reply, Autobytel)

At
Adoos, we have choosen to initially live from contextual ads during the
first stages of the project while the traffic is initially low.
Contextual ad revenues are a great way to make money at this stage with
very little hassle. Once the number of visitors hits about 1million per
month, it start to makes sense to upsell advertisers and make some
extra revenue in this way. We are developing a clever internal bidding
system that will enable advertisers to easily upgrade their ads to gain
more exposure for a small fee. More on this new features in the comming
months!

In the mean time… the best business model is to keep the costs low!  ;-)

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Indeed and Simply hired

October 22, 2005 at 10:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Indeed and Simply Hired are vertical search engines for jobs

Indeed
was launched a year ago and has recently secured a $5m investment from
The New York Times Company, Union Square Ventures and Allen &
Company. What I like about Indeed is their revenue model; selling non
intrusive sponsored links on the right of the page above the Google Ads.

Simply Hired is based in Silicon Valley and was also founded approximately a year ago. It has 4.5 million jobs already!

Here are their blogs: Indeed – Simply Hired

Indeed

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Oodle

October 21, 2005 at 8:29 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Oodle, was founded in Spring of 2004 by Craig Donato. A vertical search engine for all types of classifieds including jobs, property. cars, services, etc…

Oodle claims to have over 4 million listings. I wonder what percentage of these come from crawling versus feeds!
Oodlemiami

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Trulia

October 21, 2005 at 7:17 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

A new vertical search engine for real estate in the US

Trulia
is a real estate search engine that crawls estate agents websites. The
company was founded by Pete Flint and Sami Inkinen and seems to be
privately held, with a few business angels involved.

I wonder what the National Association of Realtors
thinks of this types of search engines. It’s a strong association in
the US and they might influence their members not to allow the Trulia
crawler to index their properties. Well see what happens…

They have a really nice graphic user interface  and a good integration with Google Maps!

Trulia1tb

Trulia2tb

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We have a new logo!

October 18, 2005 at 5:19 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Logosymbol

We have a new logo!! After 1 year of simple Arial Bold 24,
we have finally decided to start working a bit on design and the
aesthetic component of the website. It wasn’t very high in the priority
list, so that’s why its taken us such a long time….

Logohabitamos

The logo is basically four asymmetric ovals, semi transparent in
red, orange, green and purple/blue. I think it reflects the happy
positive attitude of our team and community spirit of Habitamos. The
colours bring life to the web site!

I hope you like it!

Cheers,

Julian

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Copernic

October 14, 2005 at 4:03 am · Filed under Uncategorized

I am not sure if many people know about Copernic,
but its a great piece of software which I’ve been using for a couple of
years now. I use it mainly to search my 50.000+ mp3 collection and to
search our intranet (which is not as organised as it should be!).

Copernic desktop search

I read an independent study
today which actually rates it as the best desktop search tool in terms
of usability, versatility, accuracy, efficiency, security, and
enterprise readiness.

Of course, nowadays its not good enough just being the best software, you really need a brand supporting it! (eg. Y, G or M!)

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Our little secret…

October 13, 2005 at 5:58 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Here is a little secret about us …
we are actually based in Buenos Aires, Argentina!!

Habitamos is “officially” a Spanish start-up but the whole team is based in Buenos Aires. I’m practically on my own in Madrid.

Why? For cost reasons.

When
I founded Habitamos I decided from the beginning to setup the team
directly in Argentina. I lived in Argentina for a while and think the
country is a fascinating place. While Argentina is home to a multitude
of ethnic groups, there are some characteristics that everyone shares -
energy and passion. Moreover, in Argentina you can start a new company
with a smaller investment and find highly skilled and highly motivated
people very easily.

For many start ups money is always a big
issue. I knew I couldn’t afford to pay Spanish programmers. Salaries in
Argentina are eight times less than the equivalent in Europe and thanks
to this difference I have been able to setup the company with my
limited savings.

A special mention to Skype as well which has
been a fundamental part of the offshoring. Skype has enabled us to
maintain an open audio channel between Madrid and Buenos Aires all day
long during the past year. THANK YOU SKYPE!!

I believe there
are interesting times coming ahead and I am sure that the future will
bring fantastic benefits to society and in some case even new
disruptive business models. Thanks to having offices in different
countries, we not only can count on an outstanding international
workforce, but moreover, have been able to provide free classifieds in
Spain and still have some money to spend on marketing and providing
customer service!

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IM Consolidation

October 12, 2005 at 2:45 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Microsoft and Yahoo to join forces by connecting their Instant messaging software.
Makes a lot of sense!

When
you are the underdog you want to interconnect networks, but once you
become a champion then you want to close the network. Paradox
situation? I remember when MSN messenger started they where begging ICQ
for interconnection and now that they are big they have closed system
and Google Talk can’t connect to them.

Imdeskbar

Anyway, I am completely tired of having to connect to the 3 networks
(talk, messenger, skype) in order to keep in touch with all my friends.
Luckily I don’t know anyone on Yahoo or AIM.

Strengths and Weaknesses of IM services:

1) Messenger
Large user base. It is very popular in Spain, driven by Hotmail users.

2) Skype
Excellent audio quality. Skype Out is excellent, my 50 Euros have lasted nearly a year!

3) Talk
Best graphic interface, uncluttered. Audio quality is as good as Skype.

4) ICQ
Stopped using a long time ago when I lost my contacts. (Contacts used to be saved on the hard disk and not online).

5) Yahoo
Can’t comment never used.

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