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OrganizedShopping.comMisc.5 things... 1.) even in hibernation and low-traffic, i get my fair share of questions and requests (can you look at my niche engine or shopping mashup, or how can i get started on them, etc.) ...and it's the most fun part of blogging. i hope my recent responses were helpful. 2.) however, my contact form cutoff halfway through a message recently. so if you have not heard from me, i made a few tweaks to try and fix the form. but you can also try the info@ address 3.) only a few more posts about the candidate-matching engines and we'll get to the good stuff 4.) the good stuff as mentioned in bullet point 1.) 5.) happy valentine's day!
Misc.
New Comparison Shopping StartupOkay, the good news. I'm finally implementing a bunch of my ideas from this blog. Me and a local developer have been working on a niche engine the last half of '07. The site will not go live for awhile, but I can say it is finance-related. So in addition to my thoughts in general, I'll be able to illustrate specific comparison problems, and our proposed solutions. It could make for the most interesting discussions yet. Generally, you won't find much transparency surrounding anything financial, but I think there are benefits to thinking in public. More soon.
New Comparison Shopping Startup
Organized Shopping Blog is back in 2008After a healthy hiatus, the blog is back. Once again, I've got the urge to write about comparison shopping engines. If you liked this blog in 2005, you'll like it again in 2008. I'll continue to explore & expand on many of the same topics. I'll also focus on things like niche engines. One engine in particular. More on that in a minute.
Organized Shopping Blog is back in 2008
Vote for Comparison Engines, eh?Last day to vote for the excellent Comparison Engines blog in the MarketingSherpa Reader's Choice Blog Awards 2006. Not only can you cast a vote for a very worthy blog, AND an indirect vote for all of comparison shopping, you can find plenty of other great blogs, too.
Vote for Comparison Engines, eh?
Back!I'm back! Nothing like a six-month blogging vacation to recharge the batteries. So what does someone do on a blogging vacation? For starters, I got married. Yay! Not to get all Hallmark, but wow, it was the best day ever. (If you had asked me five minutes before the ceremony, I would have had no idea things could go so smoothly.) Now a little more than a month later, I feel rejuvinated, and I have got the blogging itch... When I started blogging, comparison shopping was little relatively uncovered, compared to areas like general search. Now, I want to dig deeper into the niche aspects of comparison shopping. Specifically, I'm fascinated by product portals. General search engines are great, general shopping engines are great, but the single-topic shopping sites are the ones that blow my mind, everything from dpreview.com to softballfans.com (!) Besides researching, I also plan to launch at least one niche product portal... really excited about dabbling in as many areas of information aggregation as possible. All of the standard product-portal features, plus things like Google Map mashups, creating new data layers on top of other APIs, vertical event engines, the "radical presentation" of user reviews, microformats like hreview, etc. The Goal: to quickly go from new-site to the undisputed #1 shopping resource in its niche. Fun fun. All kinds of new posts in the works, although I'll have to balance the blogging against the building. more soon...
Back!
2006I think I am still buzzing from yesterday's coffee. That cannot be healthy. But I'm also bouncing-of-the-walls excited about what can be accomplished in 2006. Since getting settled in the new place, I have been working at least 80, 90, maybe 100 hours per week on a high-priority project in another area. In another month or so, I hope to have something spectacular to give back to the Interweb that has been so good to me. Ahhh... the Interweb. When I started this blog in early 2005, it was because I felt there was a gaping void in comparison shopping coverage. Now, luckily, much of my would-cover comparison industry news is posted by Brian. Plus, many of my would-think Internet insights are posted by Greg, and a helluva lot of my would-rant contrarian viewpoints are kicked around at Threadwatch. Nice. So as we start the new year, I feel more free to ignore popular topics, focus on niche topics, and explore them in more detail. For the last half of '05, I found myself researching other areas of vertical search at least as much as comparison shopping. In 2006, I want to cut through the Web 2.0 haze, and do heavy-duty vertical search comparisons where none have been done. Even within comparison shopping, that still leaves a ton of topics. A lot of comparison shopping activity is still under the radar. Then there are the new ideas, the big ideas. Crikey, on the way to Tokyo, I had an idea, or maybe it was an airfood-induced hallucination, that I honestly feel could rock comparison shopping. Add it to several other ideas that have been brewing this year, and I'm thinking game-changing, tip-the-tables kinda stuff. The kinda stuff that makes me want to surround myself with as much technical talent as humanly possible. David Beach says, "everything we've been using and doing up until now is bogus compared to what will be" and he is so money. Recently, someone ask me, if one of the major comparison shoppping engines offered you a position on the content side, would you take it. Now, when I started this site, it was to identify niche product portal opportunities. Then, after starting the blog, I got swept into the general-purpose comparison shopping engine world, but I still thought my primarly role would be filling gaps in the product portals. Now, after a year of blogging about the majors, and after doing as much product portal research as anyone, I must re-evaluate the end-game scenario between the majors and in niches... Thus far, in many areas, the major comparison engines have not been able to touch the niche product portals. That is, the majors have been growing, but the niches have been growing, too, and the middle tier has not significantly encroached on the lower tier. But could that change in '06? The strategists at the technology-stacked CSE's must be giddy about the possibilties. At least, I hope so. I had a lot of crappy comparison shopping experiences this holiday season. So back to the earlier question, yeah, I might be able to see myself working with a general comparison shopping engine, if any of them need a Sean on the content side, and there is a philosophical agreement on the need for experimentation. I've still got a lot of things planned outside of comparison shopping, but I would like to see some of my ideas, my babies, find a good home. But not for at least another month or so. I still have work to do in vertical searchland. In the meantime, Brian will do a great job of keeping the industry covered in 2006. I'll make time to cover topics not on his list. Maybe we'll even see new comparison shopping bloggers. Wouldn't that be cool? General search bloggers, defect to the verticals! p.s. - in case anyone is curious, I just Googled some info on the lethal levels of caffeine...
2006
Anyone near St. Louis?I'm always excited to find anyone interested in ebusiness in St. Louis. And now seems like a good, quiet time to re-raise the question, in case anyone in the area was not aware of my whereabouts... so, anyone from St. Louis?
Anyone near St. Louis?
Staying, MovingI've had thoughts about moving to the Bay Area, but decided there are too many people I'm thankful for in St. Louis. So after a long stretch of living light and month-to-month rent, I'm setttling down into a more permanent residence. I'm excited about the new workspace... vaulted ceilings, skylights, open floorplan... overall, it has a very warm feel. The only downside is I'll be offline for much of the next week or so. Then, back to the good stuff. I think much of what will influence shopping search is already happening in other areas of "vertical" search. So I'm also working on a new blog that pulls together the best ideas of each area. Hoping to launch it by January 1st. Should be fun.
Staying, Moving
Back <-- TokyoWhat a trip! I've been back for over a week, but it took time to recover from sleeping so little and eating so much. Like the first day... eat breakfast before the flight, eat lunch during the layover in Dallas, eat repeatedly during the 10+ hour flight over the Pacific, only to be treated to a seven-course meal (!) shortly after arriving in Tokyo. note to self: always arrive in Japan hungry, very hungry.
Back <-- Tokyo
Away --> TokyoAfter tomorrow, I'll be seriously offline until mid-November while visiting Tokyo.
Away --> Tokyo
Reading vs. CollaboratingPeter Caputa clarifies what I've been thinking about lately. "Lately, I've been a lot less concerned with readers and more concerned about collaborators. I've started cutting back on who I read. I am only reading people that read me and who link to me and who engage in conversation through the blogs and other means. I am making my blog more about getting to know people in a more meaningful way and supporting their initiatives and less about my writing." Great food for thought on a Monday morning. more here
Reading vs. Collaborating
AlohaI think I've come to terms with the upgrade to MT 3.2, and the unintentional re-writing of the archived URLs. The old links still work, but who knows for how long. Ehhh, I guess it is less of an issue for blog sites, with RSS and all... This week, I'm going to catch up on posts that have building up the past two weeks. Then, in another week or two, I'm going to post the five-part series on User Reviews, by far the biggest research project undertaken on this blog. From there, who knows. Maybe I'll continue to be interested in comparison shopping. Maybe I'll embark on new, related journeys. Or maybe I'll finally determine this is not a productive use of time, and ride off into the sunset. Fun month ahead...
Aloha
FocusI've been meaning to post this for awhile, but the last few weeks have been too hectic. There is too much news and near-news in this industry, and I'm not going to try and cover everything in-depth. Instead, I'm going to focus most of my time and energy on two areas: (1) researching and quantifying the differences in the shopping engines of today (2) dreaming up and illustrating the features of tomorrow. Which is a fancy way of saying, Stuff That Interests Me. Most posts will get shorter, but a few will get longer, much longer. Maybe, just maybe, I'll come up with some ideas that will help comparison shopping arrive at its logical conclusion. Stay tuned...
Focus
Misc.randomness Internet connectivity has been iffy this week. Crossing my fingers and hoping for the best next week. Lots of big stuff in the works. I had a nice long talk with Talmadge O'Neill, Co-Founder of Mezi Media, parent company of Smarter.com, a site that is moving quickly in many directions. Disclaimer: I am building an application that will incorporate data on a rev-share deal with Coupon Mountain, a site also owned by Mezi Media. I still want to take a more detailed at the new PriceRunner US, and might have some additional information on the new MSN Shopping. Also, if you cannot reach me due to email problems: Back to the getting caught up with email...
Misc.
Catching UpStill trying to catch my breath after Vertical LEAP. Was not at all prepared to have someone at the event mention, "you have not posted for the last couple days?" As tiring as it can be to try and keep up, I was reminded of the difference between daily posts and... anything other than daily posts. Another great thing about events is having long-time lurkers come out of the shadows. Amazing people doing amazing things. It is all very humbling, yet also very inspiring. Every person who reads this blog increases the incentive for me to share more thoughts, perform more research, generate new ideas, come up with more questions. And rants, can't forget about those, although I would do them even if I was still writing for the 5 readers who were here back in January. :-) Speaking of the good old days, I was not really celebrating the first six months per se, but I don't mind celebrating a nice link from Threadwatch. That was the place where I initially heard about Vertical LEAP, so if you have not found your way to that site yet, ahem!, http://www.threadwatch.org. The language can get a bit salty, but it is all part of the charm.
Catching Up
Six Months of Organized Shopping BlogSix months, nearly two hundred posts, and I'm hardly scratching the surface of comparison shopping. (We need more vertical search bloggers.) Looking forward to the hectic holiday shopping season, I'm also looking back at old posts for perspective. This list might also be useful for first-time site visitors: First Post (after the "hello world" post...) Shopping Comparison Jobs: Q1, Q2, Q3 First Looks: MSN Shopping Engine Beta, Usability: More Context for Feature Finders, Interviews: Michael Yang, Rafael Ortiz, Phillip Lan Stirring It: Arbitrageurs vs. Prequalifiers, Travel: Hotel Shootout, Flexible Date Travel As the post count grows, categorization will become more valuable, so I am doing category cleanup this weekend. If you follow this blog via RSS, please ignore any false positives for not-new posts.
Six Months of Organized Shopping Blog
Finally got around to trying LinkedIn. My profile is still too stealthy -- I'll work on that -- but it is up and open for connecting.
LinkedIn
About SeanNow that we have the April Fool's post, it is time to get back to business and take care of an item on my "To Do" list. After 100+ posts, more background information about myself is long overdue. Especially after I was referred to as "guy" by John Battelle, which turned into "a guy" and "the guy" and who knows what else. I'd better nip this nameless, faceless meme in the bud! I have included an About Sean page that answers the questions most-asked by people in the industry. www.organizedshopping.com/about/sean/ Hopefully, my background will not sound too much like an April Fool's joke. Ah well... it is what is is... Have a great weekend, I'll see y'all on Monday.
About Sean
Sean Quits This Blog To Become A Full-Time Poker Player
"Before blogging, I rolled out of bed whenever the inspiration hit me," he said. "Then I start this blog, and next thing you know, I find myself getting up before 7:00 AM to serve the East Coast. And yesterday, I realized the lag-time between making a new post and getting it picked up by My Yahoo was very long. It seemed like several hours or more. Needless to say, I was disillusioned." "What," he continued, "I am supposed to get up at 4 AM for a head start on the distribution of RSS? I thought bloggers were supposed to be slackers. At four o'clock Before leaving, Sean said not to worry, that given the high ratio of low-limit tables in St. Louis, his pocket aces will surely be busted by "suited trash" in time for a speedy return to work on Monday. + + + Note: this page was posted for April Fool's Day 2005. (more)
Sean Quits This Blog To Become A Full-Time Poker Player
Apartment Shopping ResourcesFYI, I have added a page for
Apartment Shopping Resources
My Experience Advertising on John Battelle's SearchblogLast week, I got a little crazy and advertised on John Battelle's Searchblog. Here are the down 'n' dirty details: + + + I started this blog on December 31st of last year, and other than some targeted emails and some targeted AdWords, I have not done much in the way of promotion. There are so many things I want to analyze and understand, so many ideas I want to share before I lose them, that there is not much time for anything else. Still, "traffic" to the site has been growing, slowly but surely. More importantly, I have come in contact with a growing number of fantastically interesting people, which is the real joy of working in the Internet industry. Now, I like text ads -- always have, always will. I also believe in having an online advertising slush fund, i.e. forcing myself to use a small part of the budget for unadulterated experimentation. So after seeing "Want to Sponsor Searchblog" on a near-daily basis, it was only a matter of time until I gave it a whirl. If you put me on the spot and demanded an objective for this advertising campaign, I would say to put my site in front of an audience of super-interesting, internet-obsessed people. From there, whatever happens, happens. After some fiddling, I settled on the ad below. The main goal is to raise awareness that while there is an infinite universe of general search blogs, there is currently only one blog devoted entirely to shopping search. As such, I am able to cover some aspects of shopping search in more detail than the general search blogs. I tried to convey this in the form of a question and action-answer. Then there is the practical matter of mentioning my name and blog name for the people who do not click.
Here is the activity summary for the seven-day period:
* added: Advertisers (#) is the total number of advertisers sharing the sidebar at Searchblog. Monday, March 14 Tuesday, March 15 Wednesday, March 16 Thursday, March 17 Friday, March 18 Saturday, March 19 Sunday, March 20 Monday, March 21 SUMMARY Would I advertise on that site again? Why am I not advertising this week? What would I do differently next time?
My Experience Advertising on John Battelle's Searchblog
New Hobby: Shopping Interface DesignI have decided to take up a new hobby: designing a next-generation interface for comparison shopping, regardless of what is practical or probable. Reason #1: A vision is starting to materialize, and it is going to haunt me if I do not capture it. Reason #2: I need to repent for the Nielsen-esque green and yellow of Organized Shopping. Reason #3: If it is a hobby, then my work hours might get down to a respectable number. I mention this because... * If enough of the right sites offer APIs, I might be able to turn it into reality. * If not, I would like to find a company with the resources to make it happen. * If I cannot do either of the above, I will publish it on this site.
New Hobby: Shopping Interface Design
Is Become.com starting to sound like......the dynamic realization of Organized Shopping? I have added "or Become.com" to my mini-manifesto on the home page, just in case. ;-)
Is Become.com starting to sound like...
Organized Shopping Blog Looking Promising :-)I do not want to clutter up this space with every little web mention, but can anyone blame me for doing a happy dance when Danny Sullivan gave this blog a nod on Search Engine Watch? Thanks Danny, and I'll keep working to deliver on this blog's early promise.
Organized Shopping Blog Looking Promising :-)
Organized Shopping Is Mentioned At PandiaI am thrilled and honored that my Year in Shopping Search 2004 has been picked up by Pandia Search World. Thanks to Per and Susanne Koch for their in-depth coverage of the search scene, of which this is a perfect example.
Organized Shopping Is Mentioned At Pandia
Subscribe to the Organized Shopping BlogI am not too proud to beg to be Bloglined.
Subscribe to the Organized Shopping Blog
The Shopping Search EpiphanyWhat is the shopping search epiphany? It is when all the shopping information you could ever want falls perfectly into place. It is that magical moment when you realize there is a better way. It means no more buying something only to realize that you could have found twice the features for half the price. My shopping search epiphany came while looking online for digital cameras using the buying guide at dpreview.com. It was the total package of usability and usefulness. I could not help but wonder, "why isn't shopping for everything this easy?" For me, the next logical step was to create Organized Shopping to collect and compare all of these great online shopping resources. Unfortunately, definitive resources do not exist for every category. Yet, I believe we are in the early stages of raising our collective expectations of online shopping, and I look forward to tracking major breakthroughs in shopping search in the new year. If you have found an epiphany-inducing shopping resource, please let me know.
The Shopping Search Epiphany
The Organized Shopping BlogWelcome to the blog side of the Organized Shopping project. This is where I'll be tracking the shopping search scene in extreme detail. stay tuned...
The Organized Shopping Blog
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Sean O'Rourke, publisher of the Organized Shopping Blog, has quit this blog to become a full-time poker player, effective immediately.
apartments
