Comments on: The Phony Scalability of “Local,” and “Long-Tail.” http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/the-phony-scalability-of-local-and-long-tail/ Salesmanship in Pixels Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:59:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: byrneseyeview http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/the-phony-scalability-of-local-and-long-tail/comment-page-1/#comment-189 byrneseyeview Thu, 07 Oct 2010 17:04:00 +0000 http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/?p=199#comment-189 That's a good point. Yelp appears to have tons of salespeople, or at least sales and marketing people: http://www.linkedin.com/company/yelp.com/statistics But they do have a competitive advantage because business owners know who they are. It will be interesting to see if that helps them compete with the other group buying sites. That’s a good point. Yelp appears to have tons of salespeople, or at least
sales and marketing people:

http://www.linkedin.com/company/yelp.com/statistics

But they do have a competitive advantage because business owners know who
they are. It will be interesting to see if that helps them compete with the
other group buying sites.

]]> By: benjamindblack http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/the-phony-scalability-of-local-and-long-tail/comment-page-1/#comment-188 benjamindblack Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:04:00 +0000 http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/?p=199#comment-188 Great piece. One additional observation to this statement regarding distribution to SMBs: "nobody has found a better way to do that than hiring lots of salespeople and getting them on the phone." Two companies have significant competitive advantages in this reaching SMBs. (1). Yelp has direct access to SMBs with user generated content and hence can already outperform groupon in SF for their daily deals. (2). Facebook. That is why long term Groupon is not in as good a competitive position. The daily deal business should ultimately be won by Yelp or Facebook (if they want it). Great piece. One additional observation to this statement regarding distribution to SMBs: “nobody has found a better way to do that than hiring lots of salespeople and getting them on the phone.”

Two companies have significant competitive advantages in this reaching SMBs.

(1). Yelp has direct access to SMBs with user generated content and hence can already outperform groupon in SF for their daily deals.

(2). Facebook.

That is why long term Groupon is not in as good a competitive position. The daily deal business should ultimately be won by Yelp or Facebook (if they want it).

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