Hi guys

I've already spent several weeks on this project and I've decided to launch the website today even if it's not finished (beta version).

The idea is to continue the development according to feedback, comments and advice. There are still 1000 things to do : design, typo, features, improve lists...

What does the site offer? The idea is to offer users the ability to create their own marketing lists and use them as they please. You can create as many geolocalized open data lists as you want. You select a geographical area, define parameters (categories, keywords ...) and the system extracts for you downloadable data such as name, location, address, telephone number, website, email address ...

Let's say you want to get a list of all the restaurants in Manhattan. When you register, you receive 500 baits (a bait = a location detail such as name, address, phone number, website ... if available) 1. Create a "fishing expedition" and define criteria (mainly category = restaurant) 2. Create a new pond (you will fish in this pond): With the drawing tool, create a line around Manhattan. 3. Click on "dig and fish" and you will know how many baits you need to get all the data 4. Then click on "fish them all!" and you will have a list of all the restaurants and their available details (name, address, telephone number, website...). This list can be downloaded as a 'csv' file (you can open this file with Excel, LibreOffice, Google Sheets...)

Data from services such as Google Maps or Foursquare can not be used for marketing or communication purposes. For example, the Google Maps Terms of Service (3.2.4) states "Customer will not extract, export, scrape, or cache Google Maps Content for use outside the Services". Data from The Data Pond are under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).

The data you will get from The Data Pond are not as rich as data from services like Google Maps or Foursquare but, at least, it is legal to use them.

If you have any comment or advice, do not hesitate. Shot.

Some feedback:

1) It seems you're selling location details for businesses and other places of interest? Make it extremely clear that this is not people. Also need much more detail on the source, legality and quality of this data.

2) Remove the fish/pond/bait naming. It's not a game, and these terms and descriptions just make it harder to understand and look unprofessional. Stick with normal terms like credits/lists/locations, etc.

3) Location and geographic data is an extremely competitive field. You need to figure out exactly who you're selling to and why. It seems you're going after self-service individuals/small-businesses market. Beware that there will be lots of unscrupulous and shady characters in this segment.

4) After the above, figure out your pricing and make it clear.

5) HN is not the best place to show this. Try some of the marketing forums and chatrooms to get feedback.

Thanks! It's just a beta and many things need to be improved. The first point is whether the idea is good. If so, improvements will be made based on comments and advice. Thanks again.

Idea's don't matter, it's all about execution and solving a problem that customers will pay for. You said in your other comment that you are new to marketing which is troubling to hear since this is not a simple industry to get into to.

That's why I asked about what it is exactly that you're providing and to whom. You should really have an answer to that before you go any further.

Eh, I disagree vehemently with 5).

- A geonerd and open data nerd who working now works in marketing engineering after years of working elsewhere in the stack.

I'm assuming this is a B2B service as stated on the homepage. Gamification is good for encouraging user-engagement and generally works when you can trade that engagement for ads or something else. It almost never works for B2B and it's very hard to pull off the cute/humorous approach. If you want people to pay you, you should make it as easy as possible for them to understand the product and value they're getting.

I don't really see what Glitch has to do with this. The fact that a gamified/cute site exists isn't an argument that this should be the same way. I also don't see anything about what you disagreed with point #3.

2) Several people made this remark. Now, I do not know if I keep it that way or if I do something more classic.

3) I'm learning. I am not used to the field of "marketing"

Do you have a business problem you're solving with what you've built? If you're new to marketing, what was the motivation behind creating this?

Generally, within marketing you need reliable data that can support audience segmentation, market research, targeting or advertising.

The restaurant scenario may be good for a sales person, but they would want more information like the owner/manager of the restaurant, details on foot traffic etc. so they can 'size up' a target customer for a 'sales call'.

That said, bsed on the data quality disclaimers you noted, it seems the data may not be practical for real world use-cases due to scraping restrictions.

Duly noted. What do you mean by "for real world use-cases due to scraping restrictions"?

Why not A/B test #2

IMO there is some negative connotations to “bait” and “fish” but that may resonate with your audience.

About legality, anyone has legal knowledge about this kind of data sharing ?

#1 I agree. I wasn’t sure it was people data and/or businesses

How did you gather your own data if you did not use sources like Google Maps or Foursquare?

It's just a fancy frontend for OSM data extracts.

Neat idea! We recently stumbled upon the store information in OpenStreetMap and have been trying to decide what we want to with it. I think there are several interesting possibilities, but I'm mulling over whether they might be commercially viable.

You might get some more feedback if you don't require registration to test out your platform (I personally am not thrilled about creating yet another account just to try something out). A compromise would be to allow users to enter the query, and only see say, the top three results. In order to see the rest, users could be required to register. That way, people can test out the flow of the service before deciding whether to give you their email addresses.

I personally think your previous language of "bait" and such was cute. You have a pond theme, and you could commit to it further by having graphics like "fishing expedition" or a net to represent the catch. I'm not a marketer, so it's quite possible that manigandham is right. Nevertheless, I suspect that a single data point should not be enough to change your theming either way.

Hope that helps!

Thanks! Many people were not convinced by the analogy with fishing. So I changed the text to something more classic: projects / lists. Less fun but more serious... If I have a time today, I will set up a demo that will not require registration. Thanks for the advice.

The demo is a little unclear. The instructions says to "Click [shape]" and I think you should probably delete that, since I don't see the shape anywhere else on the page. Starting with "Click where to start" is probably clear enough, although I think you can clarify the language further.

After someone clicks the "delete selected shape" button, you should probably resume the click-shape mode (with the crosshair cursor). It took we a while to figure out how to start clicking the shape and that I need to refresh the page if I want to restart.

Beyond that, I only got it to give me results when I specified a very small area; my earlier attempts encountered a "too big" error. I would guess that you are running into performance issues for larger areas, but limiting the area too much makes the demo less impressive.

Thanks. I will take into account these remarks.

Only by looking at the front page and the about page, I didn't understand how one can earn "credit"/"bait". Also, if it's "Open Data", why does it require credits to access it ?

There are many things to improve. This is a beta. I'll try to do something easier to understand. I am not used to the vocabulary of marketing. Any advice is welcome.

FYI, I've added a demo. No need to register to test the system now. https://www.thedatapond.net/new-demo