If you’re wondering what Wibiti is, so are we.
We’re not actually wondering what it is – we’ve built a good part of it already, so we have a pretty good fix on what it does and why we’re building it. What we do keep wondering about, and puzzling over, is a better way to describe it.
Our elevator pitch (yet undelivered):
We make it easy for people to build a terrific Web site about anything they want to publish – a garage sale, music lessons, an apartment for rent, a car for sale, their daughter’s engagement … you name it.
And, we make it really easy for publications to launch self-service print and online ads so people can get the word out about their Web sites.
Some tentative tag lines:
Better connections with more local information
The best way for almost anyone to publish almost anything quickly and easily on the Web and in print
We start with a few simple beliefs:
The main shortcomings in local search are that 1) most of the information people are seeking doesn’t exist yet on the Web, and 2) the existing tools to get it there come up short on enabling searches across the critical dimensions of geography and time.
As time goes on, more and more people will want to communicate more and more on the Web. Much of that communication will be promotional or commercial in nature.
People are going to want one simple tool set for almost all of what they publish publicly on the Web, rather than going to 57 different places to get 98 different jobs done. They’re willing to pay a reasonable price for the use of that tool set, especially if what they publish can be found through search engines, feeds and feed aggregators.
The best local search engine today is still the print edition of the local newspaper. Local newspapers have tremendous untapped ability to grow print and online revenues and readership if they had the right offerings.
We can leverage our print and online publishing expertise and the newspapers’ distribution and sales muscle to get distribution for our tools while enabling newspapers to grow print and online revenues and dominate the market for local search.
Our tools will only gain broad acceptance if they focus obsessively on the needs and wants of people who use them to publish and find information.
Our biggest challenge will be overcoming newspapers’ focus on themselves rather than on readers, advertisers and other people who are willing to pay to promote their message.
Newspapers may not be our best distribution channel. They do, after all, appear hell-bent on committing suicide. But, we love newspapers, and can’t resist the challenge of selling them on something that we think is a great way to transition their business models from here to there (wherever there may be).
When you’re a newspaper, a set of tools, no matter how good, doesn’t equate to a salable product or a new customer.
Even when you’ve built the tools, and control the newspaper and the Web site, getting buy-in from everyone who needs to execute on a product is not necessarily simple and straightforward. The CEO has his concerns, the Web guys have theirs, the editor is an ongoing challenge, and the sales staff …
We’re all going to pitch in to tell you how we get from concepts to products to revenues and audience.
