ZoomInfo’s New Launch - A Detailed Look

We have finally launched the new public version of ZoomInfo. This was the first major project at zoom that I have been involved with. I wanted to go over the significant changes that we have made, in addition to addressing what I still think is missing.

This list only cracks the surface. For the amount of work that was put in on the user side, there was probably ten times more work done on the backend. But this should give you a good idea of what you can expect to find on the new ZoomInfo.

Background
For those of you that don’t know what ZoomInfo is, we are a business information search engine. What does that mean? We crawl the “business web” and target in on information about companies, people, products, and services. From this mass amount of information we aggregate sources into one concise summary about a person or company. Currently we have around 36 million people summaries, and 3.5 million company summaries.

What’s New/Better

All Company Information/Search Is Free
We have opened up all of our company information and search capabilities. The most powerful item out of this is building a list of companies for a specific industry, product, or service you are searching for. Just check out this example search for Enterprise Routers. Try doing that same search on Google, Yahoo, etc. and good luck.

Quick Lists
Next to any search results you will see a little icon letting you add that result to a Quick List that is stored at the bottom of your screen. This is a great workflow tool that allows you save your research and quickly forward it to others or return to it at anytime.

Added Job Search
Through our partnership with indeed we have added a jobs section to our site. The spin on our job search is that we aren’t as focused on location, but rather the industry and relative title you are looking for. Our strength is in building an accurate list of top quality companies in a given industry, so we have applied that to try and filter out a lot of the less quality results (for example, MLM schemes) that you get on sites like SimplyHired, Monster, etc. This is our first attempt at job search. Many iterations to come.

Data
It is an ongoing effort to increase the depth, breadth, and accuracy of our data. We will never be 100%, but it’s a good goal to have to keep us moving in the right direction.

ZoomExec
ZoomExec is our subscription product to our people data. While our search by name option remains free, ZoomExec allows you to search on industry keyword, title, company name, and geography. So if you need to find a list of VP’s of Marketing in Software, you can with ZoomExec in about two seconds. ZoomExec currently costs $99/month, however, you can sign up for a 3 day free trial.

Post Your Company
For about a year Zoom has allowed you to come in and claim your profile to add and edit it. Now companies can do the same with their company summary. Companies that do not have a summary on zoom yet will be able to add their company in the near future.

What Still Needs Work
With any huge release like this, there was ten times the ideas then there was development capacity. Unfortunately a lot of what we wanted to do, and need to do, got cut out but is definitely on the board for the near future.

Company Data
Company name, industries, contact info, description, and key people are a great start. But there is a lot more information about a company that searchers could use. In the near future we will be adding deeper information about companies.

Social Features
This is probably the biggest question I will get considering my background and focus on social networking. Do I think the new ZoomInfo is lacking social features that could be very powerful? Yes. But one thing I have learned while being here is that integrating social features into a pre-existing product and business is a much different beast then starting from scratch. The right social features will come in time.

More Sections
Information about companies, people, and jobs are very important for business professionals. But there are certainly other areas that we need to add to become a complete business information research tool.

Data Accuracy
Our algorithms have been known to identify people such as “Jack Cheese,” combine two people into one, and other misc mistakes. But as mentioned as before, we will never be 100% which is part of the reason we show you where we pulled the information from. See something that doesn’t look right? Easily check the sources to see if we may have made a mistake.

But this isn’t enough. We need to continually improve the breadth, depth, and accuracy of our data. Nothing should be “good enough.”

Thanks to everyone who was involved in this launch. A lot of hard work and time was put in by a lot of employees here at Zoom.

[tags]Social Networking, Social Network, Online Community, ZoomInfo, Semantic Search, Business , Business Search, Job Search, Brian Balfour[/tags]