MiNeeds Is Great, But....

By srtooley, Thu Jan 28 2010, 13:38

If MiNeeds wants to be successful they better rethink their marketing plan. Keeping their professional community angry = a one way ticket to disaster.

By raied_malhas, Sat Jan 30 2010, 11:03

Hi, this is Raed, from MiNeeds. This is actually a great topic, I'm glad you mentioned it. We, at MiNeeds, did a lot of research and reached out to numerous associations (from home builders, to bar associations, etc.). Our goal was to figure out a way to pull professionals credentials from the appropriate associations/bodies and present them on MiNeeds on each professional's profile & bids. However, what we found is that it's almost impossible to do that today. Every association has their system of keeping and presenting the credentials of professionals. Some keep the information in excel on their local servers, others keep them in a different databases, etc. But in general most have no way of presenting that info in a way that our website can pull out easily. And the issue gets more complicated when you start looking at different counties, cities, and states. Most associations nation-wide are not integrated in any form, they are actually pretty disconnected from one another and each has their own proprietary system of keeping and presenting professional credentials data. After months of research and reaching out to different associations and bodies, we reached the conclusion that this is extremely complicated and not feasible today due to the above limitations. We also researched other classifieds and directory sites, such as Craigslist and Yellow Pages, to see if any of them figured out a solution to pulling this data. But it seems like they've reached a similar conclusion since none have this data presented on their sites today. So, to address this, here's what we did: When professionals create profiles on MiNeeds, we ask them to provide the license/credentials IDs and place a link to the official site (of their association, etc.) where consumers can view their credentials. If anyone knows of a better solution or has other ideas for us, please email us directly at: info@mineeds.com. We're always striving to make the customer's and professional's experience better at MiNeeds. And we always love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Thanks, Raed