Click here to try out the new food delivery service in more than 380 restaurants

Here is the video report of the event:

Here are some event photos:

From left to right Mohamed Salah, Marc Lambert, Ahmed Eraqi and Walid El Saadany

Yellow Pages & Otlob.com Press Conference

Reporters at the event

Many reporters, journalists and IT Specialists attended the press conference

Navteq and Turkey Yellow Pages Partnership

Presentation by Göktuğ Okan Oğuz - General Manager of eBusiness - Turkey Yellow Pages

Press Conference of Navteq and Yellow Pages

After all,  I want to say that the big winner from this partnership is the large user base in Turkey who will benefit from combining the maps of Navteq and the data of Yellow Pages

Turkey Yellow Pages Partners with Navteq and Nokia

Turkey Yellow Pages signed a 5 year strategic deal to supply business listing information to NAVTEQ and Nokia global mapping platforms. This is the kind of partnerships that the giant mapping provider Navteq and Nokia are looking for. In these days, the mapping technologies have reached a new level, GPS became a major component in any mobile phone, not less important than a camera. Most new cars are already equipped with in-car navigation systems. Detailed maps are now available for almost anywhere in the planet. Without a detailed map a GPS would be useless.

So the equation that stood for some time was:

GPS + Detailed Maps = Know your way

Now this equation has totally changed, having access to hundreds of thousands of locations for hotels, restaurants, shops, gas stations, hospitals, …. definitely means much more. It means you do not need to worry any more about finding a place you want to go to.. All what you need is to decide what you want to do, and the where or how is not a problem anymore.

The new equations is

GPS + Detailed Maps + Business Listing Locations = Find your destination

It is so exciting now that Turkey Yellow Pages data will power up Nokia OviMaps which were offered for free a few days ago.  Nokia OviMaps is now one of the most convenient mobile maps that you could use, not only because it is free now, it’s technology has changed from raster images into vector maps so the application can be downloaded locally to your mobile from Ovi App Store, and it’s size is no more than 8 MB. This includes all the maps installed on your local mobile, no need to keep downloading images from the internet.

Back in late 2006, when we developed our Nokia Mobile Search plug-in for Egypt, UAE and KSA Yellow Pages we were so delighted about it, it was a breakthrough for the use of the mobiles in our daily life to find a restaurant or a hotel on the move. One and half years later Nokia decided to drop support for their Mobile Search applications. Their insights were toward mobile maps. Now here comes OviMaps, the new amazing free Nokia mobile mapping platform and again powered by Yellow Pages, the most trusted local search provider as always.

So stay tuned for the upcoming updates from OviMaps which Turkey Yellow Pages will power up its data soon…

]]> http://mohamed-salah.com/2010/01/27/turkey-yellow-pages-partners-with-navteq-and-nokia/feed/ 1 mohsalah Turkey Yellow Pages Partners with Navteq and Nokia Nokia Mobile Search Nokia Ovi Maps http://mohamed-salah.com/2010/01/25/egypt-telecom-phone-bills-prizes-why/ http://mohamed-salah.com/2010/01/25/egypt-telecom-phone-bills-prizes-why/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:57:59 +0000 mohsalah http://mohamed-salah.com/?p=133 ]]> It does not take a marketing expert to know that the advertising campaign by Telecom Egypt is pretty much “weired”. They are offering prizes if you pay your bill on time! Is it some kind of fast cash grab or aiming to  increasing loyalty of the customers? I don’t think it is the second one, i would only be loyal to a Telco company if they include me in a point collection program, which they don’t have.

Surprisingly enough, it seems that the campaign worked,  the reason i know this is that their online bill inquiry service could not handle all the incoming requests. It has been down for almost 1 week.

Telecom Egypt bill inquiry service down

Now if you try to hit their website, you get this error message:

Telecom Egypt bill inquiry service still down

What we are using is google maps API for the GUI. However, the data is compiled by us, what we do is geocoding our database. i.e. specifying the exact latitude and longitude for each listing we have. This sounds like a tough job, actually it is but we are performing very well in doing it. 

I guess it’s logical to ask why we are doing all this effort. The answer can be found if you visit Google Maps and try to find a restaurant in Egypt and if you visit Egypt Yellow Pages website 

On Google maps searching for La Bodega will produce 7 or 8 results, some of them might be correct and some are not. This is because the data source is the user generated content, which is not correct in many cases. 

La Bodega on Google Maps

on Yellow.com.eg when you search for La Bodega, you get one and only one map location, the map location is accurate and is geocoded by our local search team. If we are not sure about a map location, then we do not enter it, if you see a map location online this means the location is accurate. 

La Bodega on Yellow.com.eg

click here to see La Bodega restaurant profile page 

The nice thing about having our geocoded database is not only the accuracy, but also the flexibility of using any maps for the GUI, we have tried both Google maps and Microsoft virtual earth (now known as Bing maps), Google maps has proven so far superior in Egypt.

1. The Inspiring: Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent

Anything in life is possible if you just try hard enough and never give up your dreams

2. The funny innocent: David After Dentist

This boy is high, he thinks he has 2 fingers!!

3. Pure Happiness: Wedding Dance

Fun People

Saying goodbye to 2009 and welcome to 2010, this is what people are interested in

Top 10 searches in www.yellow.com.eg during 2009

Hotels remain in number 1 like 2008, Restaurants jump from 4th position to second position, Schools comes in the third place while Banks drop 2 places to be in the 4th place.

Cars move out from the top 10 and Pharmacies enter in the 10th position.

Most popular businesses in www.yellow.com.eg during 2009

As for the businesses, HP retains its first place for the second year, DHL and Western Union comes in second and third places. Followed by Telco companies Vodafone and Raya, as for banks CIB jumps this year above HSBC, and finally cafes and fast food restaurants appear for the first time in the top 10 list: Cilantro, KFC followed by Pizza Hut in the 10th place.

Prefered visitor language for www.yellow.com.eg in 2009

One more interesting fact is that Arabic version of www.yellow.com.eg is getting more attention, usage has increased from 40% in 2008 to 45.8% in 2009 almost reaching the English. This is a direct result of enhancing the arabic search logic which now produces better and much more relevant results.

2009 was just a great year for Egypt Yellow Pages. 2010 will hopefully be even better, we will keep doing our best to serve our visitors and enhance their experience.

Merry Xmas and Happy new year to everyone

Eventually, they will make a handset but what does this tell us, broadband internet access from a cellular network being available for computers before mobiles? it tells us what it is really gonna be used for, i mean what’s the importance of this high speed on a mobile device? are you going to install torrents or emule on your mobile and start downloading movies? of course not… but imagine what would this speed mean to an internet user from his computer.

In my opinion the main source that is gonna drive revenues for mobile networks is the data service. It’s not the voice or SMS services any more. Today i can talk and send free SMS’s to my 400 colleagues at EYP for free as a part of our enterprise lines. The time is now over for anyone who pays 1000+ LE for their mobile bill, as you can now pay 300 LE and talk almost unlimited (2700 minutes per month).

Welcome to the new era of mobile broadband service!

]]> http://mohamed-salah.com/2009/12/17/4g-is-finally-here-but-for-laptops-not-mobiles/feed/ 0 mohsalah 4g http://mohamed-salah.com/2009/12/10/enhancing-the-user-experience/ http://mohamed-salah.com/2009/12/10/enhancing-the-user-experience/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:27:29 +0000 mohsalah http://mohamed-salah.com/?p=95 ]]> For a long long time Yellow Pages has been known as a data provider for contact information. Just providing phone numbers and address for businesses… and a little bit of more informaiton sometimes.

We are trying to change this conception. We are adding more and more features that allow users to complete their transactions from the website… Like booking a hotel or booking an event ticket, a service that we have launched just minutes ago!

Check out the new event booking service from Egypt Yellow Pages

This probably explains why Eric Shmidt joined Twitter yesterday. It was actually an unexpected move from Google for me, at least the speed they have completed this. Shmidt said about one month ago that the social media is still a grey area for Google, and that the content on facebook is mostly private content that they can’t use. It seems that a strategic decision has been made after this that they should avail this real-time feature right away for one reason or another.

Moving away from politics  back to the real-time feature. It is very cool, the thing that makes it useful it that you are actually seeing very relevant content to what you are looking for… Google are the masters of delivering relevant content. Below is what you get when you search Copenhagen climate conference

Read more about this from Google official blog

Very interesting numbers from Kelsey Group

The machine started printing without stopping empty papers with a smiley face!!!! a smiley face from the ATM! Can you believe it? could it be a software bug or a Virus software that tests the printer was running in the wrong time??

It’s more likely to be a virus, i suggest now one to use bank masr ATMs…

Update:

OMG, this turns out to be something that happened before in Singapore… A global virus

Update:

Sources in Bank Misr bank say that this incident is not a virus, it is a software that tests the printer of the ATM. Probably i was at the wrong place at the wrong time when they were testing the machine printer.

The idea behind Google wave is to replace the email system which was invented 40 years ago with a more modern and advanced communication media. The wave or a communication stream is a single entity that is stored at Google server and allows people to communicate, cooperate and collaborate. Share their media, photos, videos, and gadgets and even chat in a real-time manner. You can say it is something trying to put all the social media and web 2.0 buzz that we see these days.

I think it’s gonna be a big thing if people use it the way it is meant to be… otherwise it will be a mess, a really big mess… idea of a wave is to be one topic under which people put their contributions in one centralized place. Imagine that some recipients will open the same wave and start putting their comments  branching the topics into other topics that were not intended when the wave already started… It will be a complete mess. Imagine also that there will be no webmaster or owner of the wave, anyone can do whatever he/she wants…. No rules…

Imagine when you receive an email and you reply to it. Then after a couple of days the same person wants to send you another email, so he replies to your old email and talks about a new topic… isn’t that a mess an email that has something that is not related to the original email subject… How would this happen in Wave? much worse.

What i want to say is that wave will only work good if people get the right education to use it… and it becomes a culture… otherwise it will be one of those things that looked good at the beginning and then started to make our life more complicated after this like emails and mobile phones!

I created a campaign for the Egyptian stock market section that we launched at Yellow Pages, i thought it could use some more traffic. I followed the guidelines and chosen my words and the minimum bidding CPC that google recommends for each word to appear in a good place in the search results page and in the Google partner network websites that are relevant to that topic. After this i specified the daily budget that i want which was 2$ per day that i reduce later to 1$ when i was about to run out of credit later

Here are some words i have chosen that were approved by google as good traffic words: Egyptian stock market, Egyptian stock market news, Egyptian Bursa, EGX30 prices, Talaat Mostafa Stocks, Mobinil Stocks, ….

CPC was pretty cheap, $0.05 for Egyptain Stock Market, some words were cheaper other words were more expensive…. I’m just gonna focus here on this word…

So everything was set and i got around 80 hits on the first day of campaign July 16th 2009.. The larger portion was coming from Google network website not from Google search results page but it doesn’t matter… very nice, i though i just put this to bed… but i was wrong.. look at the below:

On 17 July, hits dropped to 25, so i opened the control panel to see what was wrong, if found that google suggest me to change the CPC bid amount to $0.07 for Egyptain Stock Market instead of $0.05. I did that and here we go again, hits reached 80’s again.

On 21 July and 27 July, I had to re-adjust the CPC again and again until it reached $0.21 which seemed after this that it was not enough… I just started to give up, i can’t keep monitoring this way on aday to day basis… I have other more important stuff to do than adjusting some keywords CPC… I took a look after a while and i found that the CPC recommeneded by google Passed the $1.10 margin!!

I was paying 5 cents for a keyword and getting good traffic. Now i am paying 21 cents and hardly getting any traffic.. Then i was expected to pay one dollar for each click!! All the credit i have (60$) and was planning to use for one month would now evaporate in one day.

I don’t really understand the pattern, what happened during these 2 weeks that raised the bid amount for Egyptain Stock Market from 5 cents to 1 dollar?? is it really people paying more in that word suddenly, does it make any sense that no one was interested in this word at all and all in a sudden everyone wants it?? or was this some way Google AdWords drag their customers to invest more and more by offering words for a little price at the begining and then gradually increasing the value until it reaches the market amount? i don’t really know but i know 2 things for sure:

1.  I don’t like PPC model, too much complicated.
2. Normal end users and SME would find it extremely difficult to manage this on their own unless provided to them by an advertising agency that manages their account. Putting in mind also the special needs of customers in the middle east and that they would rather have someone do these things for them instead of doing it themselves because it is too “technical”. Self provisioning and PPC model might not be the best advertising solution for MEA region.

The Yellow Pages time-based contractual model is simple, efficient and easy. If you compare it to PPC model it is also much more cost-effective.

The advertising services that we offer are based on the contract time, which is one year. It does not depend on the number of impression or hits the investors get. This issue whether we should move to the model of Pay Per Click (PPC), Cost Per Click (CPC), and Pay Per Call (PPCall) are always under consideration.

So which model is better? which model suits the customers in our middle east region? what model would suit SME’s better which makes the greater proportion of the Yellow Pages advertisers in middle east and worldwide?

I will try to answer these questions..