EightBlack.

I was fortunate enough to run into a couple of the Sensis guys last night at MODM.

One of the WhereIs team members told me about their new Beta.

There’s some cool new features, the interface is cleaner and easier to use than the previous version, and surprisingly, the resolution at street level is clearer than Google Earth.

I tested it both on a Mac and a PC in both IE7 and FireFox. I thought the interface was a little too sensitive, when you zoomed in and out, but it might have just been my Mac wireless mouse (or the fact that I drank too much Asahi last night).

I’d like to see a “Email Me The Directions” and/or “Send to Mobile”. That functionality just makes sense.

WhereIs is one of those businesses that is highly undervalued at Sensis. And by the sounds of it, malnourished and starved of resource. Apparently there are only 6 or so folks within the team. Which is ridiculous.

Last week, Nokia swallowed a horse by paying US$8.1 billion or so for Navteq, the GPS and mapping company. That acquisition dwarfed what Tom Tom paid for Netherlands based Tele-Atlas at just over US$2.55 billion. These two acquisitions should send strong signals to the Sensis management.

I’ve worked with Nokia in the past when I was with a big, lumbering Telco in Europe and remember visiting Nokia in Espoo, Finland. To be honest, there’s not much there so perhaps the senior Finns at Nokia were bored - or that the phone the M&A team were on had some VOIP issues and they meant to say US$800 million and the Chicago based boys at Navteq misheard them and thought they said “billions” and started high fiving each other as they faxed across the LOI. Most Americans I know only work in billions anyway. Millions is for the peasants.

Anyway, back to Sensis.

WhereIs is clearly one of the businesses that Sol needs to invest in. The mapping application of WhereIs is powering most if not all of the Aussie based GPS systems. They should dominate this space. There’s no excuse not to.

Sensis needs to spin off businesses like WhereIs, give them a truckload of money, so they can attract the best talent they can and build out the only worthwhile mapping option in Australia. They’re close with the WhereIs Mobile, Navigator and Business API silos but there needs to be more seamless integration.

They should leave the Yellow and White Directory boys to their own self destructive devices and let them go and think they can protect and fortify their dwindling print revenues on their own. Knock yourself out is all I can say.

And I know I have harped on this long enough - but obviously Sol is not listening (and he wont return my calls!). Sensis has no business being in the general search space with Sensis.com.au and it needs to acknowledge this. Its simply throwing good money after bad and given that in Australia, Google has 85% of the search market, followed by Yahoo! and Microsoft Live, Sensis has two fifths of sweet eff all left.

More importantly, its not innovating in the search space. Telling people that by using Sensis search, they have helped save the Innabooka Dwarf Tribe from extinction because now instead of all these harmful emissions being pumped into their treehouse, its being pumped into the Pacific Ocean. Or something like that.

There are some genuinely bright people at Sensis who still have a passion for what they do. They need to be encouraged to compete (and be given the tools to do so).

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Sensis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.