Brownbook the Tortoise in Directories Race?

I spoke to Brownbook earlier today and it’s a fascinating site started by the people who used to run Scoot in the UK. Everything is pretty much right there on the surface: a user-edited directory, a simple business model (claim your listing for $10 annually and some other services) and global ambitions.

Yellowikis failed at a similar project, though Brownbook is much more user-friendly. I see the effort as a something of a philosophical mix between Craigslist and Wikipedia. And like both of those it could be spectacularly successful — if it can last long enough.

The company has taken some seed funding but is seeking to avoid taking any big rounds. The question is how long will it take to get traction at scale? My sense — based on nothing other than inutition — is that it could take four or five years. But if the company can do so the value it might create would be signficant.

The site is all about getting sufficient content and coverage in enough places to drive usage and, in turn, greater SMB advertiser adoption. If it can gain the participation and content it will rise in search results, more people will discover the site (as they did Wikipedia) and that, in turn, will generate more participation — and so on.

The international dimension of the site allows it to diversify revenue sources beyond saturated markets that offer a dozen competitors in horizontal-local.

The interesting thing here for me is that there’s no special competitive advantage that the site has, other than its audacity. Brownbook also flies in the face of conventional wisdom, notwithstanding some comparable products in market now in terms of open editing (Yahoo Local and Google both now allow it). But despite the absence of any “secret sauce” or other novelty, one can see it almost inevitably succeeding if it can simply last.