Company Profiles Coming to Beyond Search
August 8, 2008
I talked with the team working on this Web log today at lunch. After I bought everyone super burritos, I was able to gather some ideas for making the Beyond Search Web site more useful to me, the team, and the two or three readers out there.
The Search Wizards Speak series on ArnoldIT.com has been well received. Several of the interviews have been recycled and turned up in Web logs in lands far from rural Kentucky and our lone “authentic” Mexican restaurant. One of the people working there has a non-hill folk accent, so the Cantina Kentucky must be muy authentico.
The idea that emerged between mouthfuls of “authentic” burritos was to post one or two page profiles of the companies mentioned in the stories in the Web log. I thought the idea was pretty awful, but the burrito-sated Beyond Search team thought it was wonderful.
Here’s the plan.
I have developed on a restaurant napkin a rough outline for what should be included in each of the company profiles. A team member or one of the writers who work on this Web log will write the profile. I have gigabytes of info about search, and I will let the lucky journalist grind through these data and then tap other sources.
Each profile will have a comments section. If you want to add information or correct an error, use the comments form. Once a year, we will roll the comments into the baseline profile. In this way, you can get some basic information about the companies mentioned in the Web log. You can also update or correct the basic entry.
I think we will be cutting and pasting from company information of search vendors’ Web sites. I am thinking about adding my unique stamp to each write up with my personal “likes and dislikes” for each system. My attorney says he wants to think about this “likes and dislikes” stuff, so stay tuned on that point.
Keep in mind that I do really meaty analyses of companies in the search and content processing business. The profiles, like the interviews in Search Wizards Speak, will provide some useful information but the juicy stuff will not be included.
So what’s juicy?
Well, I just completed ripping through Endeca’s patent documents. I have identified some upsides and downsides to the inventions disclosed. I have then worked through the publicly available information about Endeca, made a couple of calls, and thought about what I have learned. That type of detail is not going to be in these free two-page profiles. Some lucky or silly outfit is going to have to pay me for the slog through the golden prose of lawyers and engineers. The prose makes Henry James’s novels look like the script to the new Batman movie.
I want to post a couple of test profiles and invite comments. I will go slowly at first, but if I can get the kinks worked out, my goal is to have one profile every week or two.
One of the burrito eaters suggested I sell profiles to companies who want the Beyond Search team to write about a specific firm. I am a greedy goose, but I want to put that idea on the back burner until I figure out if this is a feasible activity. There’s a lot of email and chasing required to get an interview completed. I’m not sure about search company profiles. The idea of money is easier to experience than the actual process of squeezing a beet for nectar.
Watch this Web log for a link to the first profile. I’m thinking next week. Comments? Suggestions? Let me know in the comments section below this article.
Stephen Arnold, August 8, 2008
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Dears Stephen..,
Nice to see your good blog.
Cahya,
Thanks for the kind words. Folks who dislike my Web log outnumber those who like it by a wide margin. If you keep reading, I will annoy probably you as well.
Stephen Arnold, August 10, 2008