ContentTonight A9.com and Amazon released what is, in my opinion, by far the best Yellow Pages application on the web. In fact, everyone is covering it. And frankly, rightly so, as it has the potential to tie together the best features of mapping sites, review sites, and traditional yellow pages.
The first thing that will strike the user will be the images. Yes, we really drove around the country and took pictures of tens of thousands of businesses. We did this with cars equipped with digital video recorders and GPS devices. A pretty amazing feat — but it is just the start. There are many more streets to be covered, and many streets that can be covered again and again. To be honest, there are things we have in mind that will blow you away.
But I really believe the true strength of this application is the Amazon community. Amazon users are among the most passionate, and most prolific, reviewers in the world. When you have millions of Amazon users all writing and editing content for each and every business in the world, there is not a single other resource that can come close to offering the range of opinions and knowledge all in one place. Like many of you, I won’t buy something without reading the reviews on Amazon. This application brings that community to restaurants, bars, optometrists, florists, elementary schools — you name it, Amazon users have thoughts on it.
And fair enough, the images are cool. Especially when you realize that users can upload their own images for any business or location in the database. I personally plan on photographing everything in the Upper Haight, and imagine that thousands of other people will do the same in their own neighborhoods. In fact, I’ll go back through my archives and dig out photographs from my old neighborhoods in NYC and post them here. It’s like Flickr, but tied to real places that people really care about.
Working with the team that built this was fantastic. We were a very small group of people — I won’t say exactly how small, but we held our meetings in one room. The core engineers behind this application have been together since before I joined the company, (and my personal role was relatively minor in any case), and they are hands down some of the best I’ve ever worked with. Each and every one of them “gets it” and collectively they are probably the easiest to get along with group of smart people I’ve ever known (a refreshingly common theme at A9 — and yes, we’re still hiring).
It never felt like crunch time, even when we were busting our asses. Perhaps that is because we weren’t pressured to get it done to meet some arbitrary deadline. The team got things done because it honestly wanted to show the world what it had accomplished. And even now, right after launch, each and every one of the people on the team is excited about taking it even further. Personally, I’m just glad I work with them — I definitely wouldn’t want to be competing against them.
After the launch I sent an email to everyone congratulating them and inviting people out for drinks. That, and we’re going to take our digital cameras out and around San Francisco while we bar hop. Then the next day we’ll all upload our photographs of each bar and business we run across.
At some companies the apathy to such a proposal would be palpable. But here, this time, these guys — even after more than a few days of late nights — they were all clamoring to buy the second (and third) round.
Shoot me a line (dewitt at unto) if you want to come this weekend. Should be a very good time…