Part 1 – The Future of Local Media: Background

This is the first in a series of posts on the future of local media that in the end I will aggregate together to produce a short whitepaper. My goal is to share my thoughts as well as pull together insight from many others into a synthesis or “fuller view” of what the future of local media might look like in 3-5 years time. We will also start to develop a useful blueprint or roadmap for local media. This is an ambitious undertaking for me but one I am determined to tackle.

The impetus for this series of posts comes out of the insights and debate we recently had at The Local Social Summit in London (more on this event later). This along with debate and comments from many other commentators around online media echo similar ideas (For example: Jeff Jarvis | Martin Langeveld | Sebastien Provencher | Greg Sterling and many others that I will link and refer to as we go ). So, I figure its time to pull together my thinking and lay out some predictions.

I am not alone in thinking the next 18-24 months will continue to be very interesting for local media. We will  see more rapid changes to how consumers access local media and lots of evolution on the social side. I also can see a revolution in business models approaching…

Looking Glass Concept - very cool & from Japan

Here’s the initial outline of what the series will cover:

• Background
• Challenges for traditional media companies
• Broadly how online changes the rules
• Features and functions for consumers
• Business models
• Scenarios and Examples
• Summary

By local media I am talking about online digital media that covers local geographic areas usually at the county, city and town level (but is can be as wide a single country if it’s a small one like say Ireland; and it can be smaller all the way down to hyperlocal – ie, a neighborhood). This is the traditional realm in the offline world of local newspaper, the yellow pages, local broadcaster, classifieds, radio and even some magazines. Online we have these same players plus lots of pure plays like Google, Yahoo, Yelp, TrustedPlaces, Qype, Local People, Ireland.com and many others. I should also add that much of what I will discuss is applicable to other online media types and should translate very well for niche and verticals.

I will get more into the challenges for local media in the next post but I want to seed this thread with the concept of how online ‘flattens’ the world for digital media. By flatten I am talking that once online traditional offline players now often compete with everyone and can easily move into new territory. Google of course is an example of this in that they offer news, local listings, maps, video, etc, etc. Another example is a local newspaper can now easily offer local news video content. The offline tradition of a media owner helps define its area of expertise, business model and content but once online this matter less. I am going to call this flattener number 1 “universal competition” – you compete with everyone and anyone can compete with you. Additionally, I see 2 other key trends that flatten the landscape further (1) access to cheap/free publishing tools to anyone – including video; and (2) user control (not just user-generated content.

To summaries my top 3 flattening trends are:

• Universal competition
• Ubiquitous access to publishing tools
• User control

In part 2 – I will outline the challenges I see for local media online.

Sat Nav Data Point on a Park Sign – is this a trend?

Sat Nav Data on a Park Sign

I was recently on Sandbanks in Poole, Dorset. While playing with the kids at  a playground on the beach I noticed the park sign had a sat nav postcode on it:

Sat Nav: BH13 7QQ

It also had the address of the nearest A&E hospital with street address and postcode. Is this a growing trend to put Sav Nav and very precise geo data onto public signs?

I will keep my eye out for this… This seems like a no brainer to me as its very useful and makes it easier  for sat nav and mobile users. And makes it very easy to link the web to world of things or geo code photos and helps projects like Open Street Map, etc.

Local Social Summit ‘09 – a success, links

The Local Social Summit which I co-organised with Simon Baptist has been hailed a success despite the rain . The general feedback was that it rated 8 out 10, although I would give it a 7 as there were a few things we will improve next time we run the summit.

Next time I would like to include:

• A vertical/classified panel
• Set of case studies
• Demo zone

Over the next days and weeks we will be putting together some video and deeper analysis of the discussions and insights from LSS ‘09. In the meantime you can find all the slide decks here. For me the “140 character” highlight moment was when Bernie Hogan said:

The death of distance [due to the Internet], ummm NO!

Other blog posts on LSS so far:

• Facebook users talk to just 4% of their online friends
• Volker’s Blurb: Local Social Summit London

Update: Here as link to all the slide decks from LSS ‘09.

The Future of Local Media – at #LSS09

Note:  most of this post was cross-posted on the LSS blog.

One of the sessions at Local Social Summit ‘09 (btw – Here’s #LSS09 on Twitter) that I am very much looking forward (all the sessions will be good, but this one will rock) to is an interactive lab session being run by Praized’s Seb Provencher. The session is called: What does the Perfect Local Media Company Look Like in 5 Years Time. This lab should draw upon Seb’s excellent white paper – “I Have Seen the Future of Local Media” – from earlier this year.

At dinner last night we had a lively and interesting discussion with both Seb and Greg Sterling about this topic. The general consensus was that most traditional local media companies are quickly running out of time to start planning for their future. Greg also blogged about our discussion earlier today.

Our discussion around the future of local media seem to echo many trends and predictions that even Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt made last week at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009. The RWW team pulled together this very good 6 minute highlight video chop of Mr. Schmidt’s interview. Here’s the RWW post: Google’s Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years (well worth a read).

Below is the presentation Seb will run through during the lab tomorrow:

Local Social Summit: Connecting with Consumers where Local meets Social

I am one of the creators and thus organizers of what is shaping up to be an awesome conference next month in London at the ICA. For anyone interested in the intersection of local media and social networking this is an event not to be missed. The event microsite has the complete agenda and more details…  Here’s an overview of the event:

Local Social is an invitation-only summit for leading media owners (directories, news, TV, radio and social networking), retailers and advertisers who are driving digital innovation in the local and social media space across Europe.  We think this “local content meets social media” is an important area, and one that is under-explored.  The conference will look to open up debate across multiple industry sectors. With a focus on what works and what trends are emerging as local and social media continue to change how consumers engage with brands, content and each other.

The line up of speaker and panelists is shaping very nicely:

• Andrew Burke, CEO Amino Technologies
• Dr Bernie Hogan, Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute
• Greg Sterling, Internet/Mobile Analyst
• Jonathan Ewert, Co-Founder Skepsis Group
• Seb Provencher, Co-Founder Praized Media
• Sokratis Papafloratos, CEO TrustedPlaces
• Dave Ingram, CEO Brownbook
• Felix Petersen, Founder Plazes.com (Nokia)
• James Brown, CTO Cloudmade
• Paul McCrudden, of the #6weeks project fame
• Simon Greenman MD – Online, European Directories

I am particularly looking forward to Bernie Hogan’s (Oxford Internet Institute) talk on Facebook social networks and how to make sense of  it or now in this era of data feed overload. All the panels will be excellent for sure. There is a Social Media Marketing panel that is being moderated by my pal Mike Weston (Sandline blog). And we have the great blogger/Internet analyst Greg Sterling (Screenwerk) running two panels that will be world class.

At last count there were less than 30 spot left at this invitation only event. As a reader of my blog (all 5 of you) consider this an open invite and if you want to attend please sign-up here on eventbrite (and do it quick).

Here’s a glance of the agenda:

Agenda at a Glance -

Keynotes:

• “The Opportunity of Social Media”
• “Making sense of the networked audience: The case of Facebook”

Panels:

• Local Search & Monetisation – The View from Europe
• Local Gets Social – The Impact of User Generated Content and the Promise of Real-Time Search
• Social Media Marketing – The Rules are Changing
• Mobile – The Future of Apps is Bright

Plus a Lab looking at “What does the Perfect Local Media Company Look Like in 5 Years Time.”

Hope to see you there. It should be awesome. In the meantime if you have any questions or suggestions let me know.

Twitter is Down – “no pulse for the Planet”

I am addicted to Twitter. I need to get a life probably. Its down – here’s the status blog… Anyway this post  (w/ongoing updates) on TC is very readable (and pretty short) and I like thier suggestion of 15 things to do when Twitter is down…

Update: Its obvious I can’t even tweet about Twitter being down. Instead I am writing a very short blog post. Going to go call some friends now.

Three Short Links: 06 July 2009

Here are a few interesting posts and links for a Monday. btw – Happy belated 4th of July to all my American friends…

1. A New Venture Firm’s ‘Secret Plan’ – interesting short piece on NYT worth a read, be sure to check out Marc Andreessen’s comments.

2. It’s Here! iTwitter: The First Twitter App to do Push – another reason for me to get that iPhone and quick…

3. TrustedPlaces’ CEO on LocalPeople – a short interview with the CEO of UK based TrustedPlaces about the new local search partnership in the UK with a newspaper group. This deal/move looks very smart and I will be watching to see how it goes. In the UK market, I am a firm believer that ‘local’ is still an open space waiting for better services to emerge and that there is still lots to play for.

Also, have to plug the sweet post Greg Sterling did – FB v. twitter -  about our social media marketing case study. Be sure to check out the comments as there useful additional info in there as well.

Three Short Links: 30 June 2009

Here’s a new way to ensure I do some more regular posting. How? Do a short post with three of the more interesting links from my daily or weekly blog scan.

1. Firework 3.5 – top 5 killer features. I like the location awerness. This is starting get interesting and is anothe r step the evolution of the brower as O/S.

2. Pirate Bay sells out – need to digest this and come back with some thoughts.

3. Lessig v. Kelly – round two on the semantics of socialism and maybe Web 2.0.

And, a bonus. This mobile browser looks very very cool.

Universal Chargers for Mobile Phones – about friggin time

We will finally get universal chargers for mobile phones. Why not do this for more devices?

In Japan you can already get the 1st solar charged mobile handsets… That’s anotehr about time development (ie, all calculators have it already). But I do wonder how much juice one can expect?

The End of Retirement – a few comments

I was reading The Economists special report on ageing in the latest print edition of the magazine (or I should say newspaper) over the weekend. The leader is titled The End of Retirement – not sure I like that tag line. The report as you would expect from the Economist was interesting and though provoking, however it didn’t seem to give any cutting ideas or open a debate on how we might reboot retirement in the 21st century.

Now I am long way from being ready (or wealthy enough) to retire but I am taking a mini-retirement this summer in a style of life hacker Tim Ferris would be proud of. Anyway. lets not gloat about by 8 weeks with the kids and that beach house for now. I am also not clever enough to offer up a 10 point plan on how we should (at least in the developed western nations) look to reboot or rethink retirement just yet. But this is a topic I am interested in thinking about some more. For now here’s what stuck me when reading the Economist report:

More people should look at mini-retirements now. Actually maybe I don’t want to give this one away?! This would go well with the proposal or reality that more people will need to work longer. Anyway, the data says we should live longer if we work and stay engaged later in life. Maybe we can get some sponsorship here.

Work-life balance is not anywhere near where it needs to be – yet. Seems to me if the balance can be smoothed out over one’s lifetime then that would help finance the ’retirement’ phase in people’s live. I think this is an area where some government schemes could come in handy. I am not thinking socialist style but maybe something like a ‘retirement’ credit account that you can tap into early to cover you for certain things and payback later (with all the tax benefits of a pension etc). Perhaps we need look more at how to structure parental and compassionate leave schemes and flexible working with a long term view. Once the kids are gone we can all put in more hours at the office then. Let’s get more thinking going around this area

I am already assuming that any state pension I get is beer money at best and I am pretty sure others in my generation are making similar plans. I am not sure private pension run by bankers are going to be the answer. So would be a good idea for there to be other tax break schemes around in this area. Need some beta programs or even prototypes. Maybe ‘private’ programs to share holiday homes or autos when we retire could help. Let’s get some entrepreneurs thinking about how make that a business.

My last comment is The Economist point out that the prediction is for labor shortages in rich nations in the coming decades. I am note sure I see this. I am more worried we continue to get real good at automating things and that we need less workers overall in the economy. Now that’s scary unless we radically rethink retirement, economics and the wider role government needs to play.