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A Simple, Affordable Traffic Building Tool For Business!The Digital Off Ramp From The Web To Your Front DoorIf You Do Nothing Else Today You Should Click On the Log-In or Register Link Above To Get A Username And Password
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MSPinfo does many things but it has two main functions.First, it is a regional marketing platform for local business that uses a hybrid form of social networking and rewards to connect local business with local shoppers. If you are a small retailer you have to ask yourself "How Connected am I? Is what I sell searchable on the web? If I want to move one item tomorrow can I communicate that to my customers quickly and in a way that allows them to share that information with their freinds? If you don't have answers to these questions you need to begin working on a strategy that includes MSPinfo.com. For local shoppers who use MSPinfo it means real rewards they can use; like a gift card for things they really want, even as simple as a gas card and for the business owner it means more customer interaction and ultimatly more sales. Second, it is an archive of information about the Minneapolis, St Paul metropolitan area and by extention all of Minnesota, everything from todays events to ancient Indian history, it can be what ever you wish it to be, because you can also be the contributors. The history of St Antony Falls; make that your project. Bike paths in the Metro, we have that in "Transportaion". Minnesota Tulip society, try "Home and Garden". Collecting stamps or even antique firearms, it's in "Things We Do For Fun". Almost 192,000,000 subjects of interest in the metro are possible! And if you are a business you know that almost every interest, sport, hobby and subject has a connection to a business that serves those interests and MSPinfo helps you make and keep those connections. Soon we'll have more; for a beginer, MSPinfo brings you the news, we link to all the local news sources and soon we will begin to develop our own content. The web changed everything but newspapers don't seem to get it, maybe they've lived with the old model of news delivery for so long they can't change. We don't know but we do have some ideas that we think will make MSPinfo not just good compitition for those other guys but the "New Trusted Source". Remember the Old Newspaper guy who said it was were everyone went to find everything? We intend to be the New place were everyone gos to find everything! Internet users expect a lot more "experience" and "interaction" than a newspaper delivers and we understand that and perhaps more important we think we know how to deliver it!. However, MSPinfo.com is like a newborn child; everything it will know must be shared or taught by you, the users of MSPinfo and the staff of MSPinfo. Having come into the world with some instinctive knowledge, MSPinfo needs your contribution to have, hold and share all the knowledge of the Metropolitan Area and it all begins when you become a member. A few more features of MSPinfo.com
We call the software engine that operates MSPinfo.com, "The Digital Combine" because it uses many kinds of applications to gather and organize many kinds of information so that the data can be found and used by you. Because you and every other user can contribute to the "The Digital Combine" it becomes the knowledge base of an entire metropolitan area. Imagine the combined knowledge of millions of people in one place! What can you share? You will also notice that the framework is built around categories and interests. A taxonomy, from most broadly defined to specific knowledge. These categories and interests are broadly defined because many interests can cross categories and categories have many interests. From the Minnesota Ribbon Weavers Guild to contact information and feed back on every metro business, a fast track to every school web site in the state, stores in Wayzata that sell widgets to the best place to buy flower bulbs in Bloomington, information on drain repair to the University of Minnesota's research on galactic physics; MSPinfo is designed to be the place to share and search for everything there is to know about our metropolitan area. You can contribute to it, help to design it and help to build the knowledgebase. What can you share? We all know something that's more important than we may think. Maybe it's just a small piece of history or maybe you think that our organization is all wrong; show us how you would do it. We don't know what we don't know; it's up to you to tell us AND WE'RE HOPING YOU WILL. Even if you think you have nothing to share we know you will share something at some time because everyone has some knowledge of importance even if it's the best place to get fondue in the northern suburbs! There is one rule; If you would not want your 12 year old daughter to see it don't try to share it here. |
The Taxonomy Of A Metro Is Not very Different Than The Taxonomy Of The Animal Kingdom |
Taxonomy?This image is an example of the taxonomy of the animal world and begins with "Kingdom" and ends with "Species". You can see from the upside down pyramid that the metro area is the largest group and "species" represents the one subject you may be interested in.  Broadest to Narrowest Interest |
Our "Kingdom" is the Metropolitan Area, "Phylum" is the next level, this is what you see on the home page Icon Navigation Panel.
The phylum "I Wish" is there to display all those things you wish were explored but are not being explored. You may find a group of people that shares your interests and builds on your knowledge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
Proposed PhylumsIn our taxonomy or "Digital Combine" the "Kingdom" is the Our "Phylum" is something like this:
Think you have a better idea for Phylum categories or maybe just an idea you want to share, send us an email;
DoItForMe@mspinfo.com
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Business OwnersRight now someone in the Metro wants to buy your slowest moving product but they don't know you have what they want. If you are one of the many businesses of the Minneapolis / St Paul area we would like
you to search the business directory and be sure you are listed and your information is
accurate and complete. Click on the business icon on the home page then click on the
sub-icon for "Business Search" and enter your business name in the next screen in the
box under "Search for a Busines by Name" and click the "Search Now" button. If your not there
you can enter you business information Next MSPinfo has some new ideas for you. First your basic listing is free and gives you the ability to fully explain your business with images and as much text as you need to tell customers what you do. It's like having a free website with out the hassles of designing a web site, however if you have a website MSPinfo magnifies the power of you web site by having it display inside the MSPinfo format and if you couple that with the MSPinfo "Business Notebook" your business becomes even more sticky to the big search engines. We also give you a small icon that connects your website to your MSPinfo Business Notebook. Another feature is a business rating system that allows your customers to tell your story and the higher your rating the higher your business displays in the search results. You can also place your stores "Sales" in the community calendar with sale info and links to your v-store and website. There are other online listings that claim to "hook you up with those big search engines with the funny names so you can be seen on the World Wide Web", But think about that; how important is it to be seen in Norway or even Nebraska? Your business is local and MSPinfo is local and designed to get you seen locally! No one else does all this! MSPinfo.com also offers you a virtual store, we call it a V-Store, so customers can search and see what you sell with out the hassles associated with having E-Commerce. It's really a bigger idea than just a virtual store, it also enters everything you've listed in your V-Store in the Classifieds, a unified metropolital marketing platform. It's like the missing link between online sales and Main Street retail; customers find what they need online then head for your store. Sound complicated? It's easy, but if that seems a little scary or a little more than you want to do we'll do that for you. Think you have too many SKU's to make that work? We know you're not an IT Professional; so we'll do that part for you, we have clients with tens of thousands of products in their V-Store. And through December, 2011 we'll do that for you at no cost. We're dedicated to driving customers to your business. Pre-register now, DoItForMe@mspinfo.com Why should you have a virtual store on MSPinfo? MSPinfo allows an individual user to have a personal page or a "NoteBook" page as we call it. It is like a hybrid "Face Book" or "My Space" page but more useful for everyday life. You'll be hearing more about that soon. There, a user can add your products to their notebook page in their "I Want This List". This list is like a reminder list for the user and an online gift registry for their friends and family; and in the next version of MSPinfo a retailer will be able see a month by month update of those items picked from your MSPinfo virtual store and how many people have your products on their wish list. This is a list of interested customers that can choose to be contacted should you wish to place an item on sale or have "private sales". That could be a good thing for your business.
Have you been thinking of using one of the Groupon Style of promotions? |
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Developers and ContributorsLocal search is like HOPE in an election year, always promised but never delivered!And why should you expect more; 90 percent of what's interesting in a metro area is not on the internet, search engines however search the internet. Local search requires a whole new way to think about how real life and the virtual world interact and what sort of intelligence is needed. You knew that too; you probably also believed you could do it a little better than the big guys. After all it's really just a big database with an algorithim that facilitates search of the data. There is no doubt that some algorithmic logic is always necessary but to make a local search engine work; after all we have a database too. It's the collective human intelligence of the community that's needed and that intelligence must get into and hang on a skeleton or framework. That must happen in a way that is simple and intuitive for even the most inexperienced user (think your garandmother) and the informtion has to be organized in a sort of taxonomy. Have an idea send us an email, DoIt@mspinfo.com This frame work, that you see now is a guide not the official taxonomy. The official Taxonomy could take a year or two to develop, assuming we have the help of people like you. Remember this taxonomy is not based on how you see the metro; it's based on how anyone would see the metro. We may all agree that "Government is a "Phylum" but is "Get-A-Ways and Vacations" or Toys For Grown-Ups" a "Phylum" or are they a "Class" in the "Phylum" , "Things We Do (for fun)". Do we need more Phylum or less Phylum? What are the "Class" in each Phylum and do we need "Order", "Family", "Genus" and "Species" or would Family and Species be enough. And what about these funny Animal kindom names, surely we can find better names for a metro!! |
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