Dishing on Data: Interview with Vanessa Fox
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
This is the second in an occasional series of audio interviews we’re doing with tech gurus and alpha geeks. We’ll be talking to them about how they manage their digital life, where they store all of their virtual stuff and related geekery. Photo by Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com.
You can listen to the interview, or read the transcription below:
Darren: This is Darren Barefoot talking today for PutPlace about backing up your digital life. Today we’re talking to Vanessa Fox. Hello, Vanessa.
Vanessa: Hi. How’s it going?
Darren: It’s going well. How’s it going with you?
Vanessa: Wonderful.
Darren: Excellent. And tell us who you are.
Vanessa: Oh. My goodness. That’s a very good question. Well, I do a number of things online, I guess. I probably am mostly known for what I’ve done in the search industry. I used to work at Google and built Webmaster Central for them. Now, I’m actually launching a new site called Nine by Blue where I’m going to just try to talk about a lot of different things involved in acquiring more visitors through things such as search and social media.
Darren: And so this is the number nine by blue dot com?
Vanessa: Yes, so I’m going to try and make sure to have both it spelled out and the number redirecting to the same place.
Darren: Yes. That makes sense. And why that domain?
Vanessa: You know, it’s very hard to come up with names. I think people who do naming are very skilled. They have a talent that I don’t have. So I spent a lot of time thinking about it and what I really just sort of wanted to convey was the idea that there actually is a lot of data out there about your customers, about your potential customers, and so you can take all those numbers and sort of turn them into something more, something that’s actually an engagement as opposed to just the numbers. ‘Cause there’s just tons of numbers and it’s hard to find what’s actionable. So, you know, really aggregating that stuff in a useful way. Just sort of, numbers into something else. And I just like blue. I like the water.
Darren: Sure. It could have been any color. You went with blue.
Vanessa: Could have been anything. Yeah.
Darren: Maybe you got a spot in this whole — Hopefully, if you’re really successful you can spawn an imitation site which is “Seven By Indigo” or something like that.
Vanessa: Yes, exactly.
Darren: I’m going to go register actually all the other numbers and all the other colors right now just so I can own –
Vanessa: Oh no!
Darren: So somebody’s like “Oh, what was that website? Nine by pink?” Anyway. Actually, that’s a fun way to slice a bunch of domains is by having colors associated with given, kind of, topic set.
Vanessa: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Darren: Not to use a stereotype, but if you had a blog about gay lifestyle it could be “X By Pink” or something.
Vanessa: Uh-huh.
