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.

Local Search in Singapore

I was catching up on the latest over on Alt Search Engines today about search in Singapore and it reminded me about a innovative new local search engine from Singapore called Rednano.

Rednano is a JV between Singapore Press Holdings (a newspaper group) and Schibsted (another mainly European newspaper and online media group. Much like other local search initiatives like Ireland.com, Sesam.no, 24.com (in South Africa) and Sensis (in Australia) – Rednano is trying to fuse great local content with the best local knowledge to delivery a great ‘local search’ site in that region… And thus create a winning strategy against the likes of Google and Yahoo!

Trustedplaces Partners with bview

Trustedplaces – which is agreat site for local business reviews – annouced an interesting partnership with bview this week. From the official PR:

We’re very excited to announce that TrustedPlaces has just partnered with Bview to offer online marketing solutions for local businesses. Bview is a new customer reviews directory for all UK businesses. The combined offering is the first collaboration of its kind in the UK and places the two companies in a unique position to benefit from the growing local, online advertising market. It presents a viable and cost-effective alternative to traditional directory players, at a much lower cost.

The partnership enables and supports local business owners to manage their online reputation by providing attractive advertising models and enhancing exposure to relevant customers across both sites. We believe this is a fantastic opportunity to provide our growing community with great special offers from relevant businesses and establish a two-way, constructive conversation between TrustedPlaces members and business owners.

You can read the full PR HERE.

Local Internet Driving Tons of Traffic

Over on Greg Sterling’s blog there is a good post – Among the ‘Top 50′ Many Local Sites- about all the traffic that coming from ‘local sites’ in the US. This does onlycover US data but I’ve got to think there is a similar trend in the UK and across Europe. For some reason this post got me thinking about all the local sites that I either use regularly or know others use a lot. What is striking about this list is the number of sites in the Uk that have local user generated content (UGC).

A list of some of the bigger and better Local UK Sites:

• Multimap
• Yell
• Touch Local
• Zagat.com
• Trustedplaces.com
• Hardens.com
• Squaremeal.co.uk
• Timeout.com
• London-eating.co.uk
• Beerintheevening.com
• We Lovel Local
• Tipped
• This is London
• Qype
• Upmystreet

Plus in the UK there is a very strong local newspaper market and a super saturated media market just for London (8 million plus people with 80%+ online at home, work and mobil) … I will dig around for some stats and try to come back with a view of how much online local traffic is being driven in the UK.

On a related note: I notices that new printed yellow page books (hard copy) had been delivered around some parts of central London today. I predict that many of these will just sit out on the street. I will try to keep track and report back.

A New Local Search Site in Ireland – ireland.com relaunched

It was very sweet today to get online and see that Ireland.com has relaunched the site as a local search ‘portal’ for all things Irish. BTW – this is such a money domain (simple, geo, universal)!

In addition, the Irish Times newspaper site has been re-designed, the subscription charges dropped and the newspaper has moved to a dedicated URL – http://www.irishtimes.com/ (the newspaper used to be at the URL Ireland.com).

The Irish Times site has also had a major face lift and is much improved. The site also looks to be driving a strong connection to the major classified channels: Homes, Jobs, Cars and with a special Dating channel as well (this is interesting to have a focus on dating).

A quick review of the Ireland.com site reveals a very clean design and an almost sexy brand – definitely bright and breezy. It is driven by a single search box that handles What/Who/Where. The results pages are very Web 2.0 and include UGC, with an option to create your own account some you can add a review.

There are ‘lifestyle’ channels (you can see these channels icons above) that can also act as navigators (an alternative path to finding content and can also acts as stand alone sub-sites) covering:

• Sport
• Travel
• Going Out
• Staying In (nice one!)
• Style & Beauty
• House & Home
• with 2 others yet to launch (ie – coming soon)…

Here’s an example hotel results page:

I will be back with more on this site, but I wanted to get something out quickly this morning to help get the word out there. Would enjoy getting feedback and commnets from anyone using the site. Thanks.

UPDATE: Greg Sterling has a short post on this site here – I agree that is a “killer” domain and the new Ireland/com really is a shinning example of what and how to develop this kids of local/geo site!

Great Local SEO Best Practice Info

Thanks to Greg Sterling’s blog I was pointed to this post on David Mihm’s site – Local Search Ranking Factors. Anyone working in the local search space should definitely read and digest this study. The goal of the piece is:

It is my hope that this study will help small business owners confused by Local Search, or those strapped for time, to prioritize their marketing efforts.

I also think those of you who service local businesses (SEOs, SEM, IPYs and local search sites) can also pick up valuable tips to improve services for local biz and sites for users.

Local Matters Merging with mobilePeople

This deal – Local Matters + Mobile People – will be of interest to people in the local search and IYP space. The deal had been rumoured for months now and so no surprise to see it finally announced. The combined company should be able to provide a more comprehensive solution to new and existing customers. There are no details on the value of the deal. If anyone has any info on the deal size or wants to speculate please comment… Note: Local Matters are a fairly significant partner with FAST in terms of using the FAST search platform for as a core element of LMI’s solution. It will be interesting to see how this relationship evolves once FAST is part of MSFT.

Here’s the full release from the LMI site:

March 28, 2008

For Immediate Release

Local Matters and mobilePeople Merger Provides Unique Offering to Directory Publishers

Copenhagen/London, NN March, 2008 – Local Matters, Inc., a Denver, Colorado based Media Technology Solutions provider, and mobilePeople a/s, a Copenhagen, Denmark based local mobile search and advertising provider, have entered into a Share Purchase Agreement on March 21, 2008. Under the terms of the transaction, Local Matters will acquire all of the outstanding capital stock of Mobile People in exchange for a combination of cash and Local Matters stock. The combined company would provide directory publishers, media publishers and directory assistance providers with media technology solutions that connect consumers and advertisers across digital channels including the internet, wireless and voice.

There are now more than three billion global mobile users, and local search ranks among the top content categories that consumers utilize on their mobile phones. Publishers are increasingly extending into Internet and mobile to capture users and local advertisers.

Local Matters’ CEO Perry Evans said: “We chose mobilePeople because we believe they have the best technology to create a mobile distribution presence for publishers. Its expertise, its track record and its innovation cycles set them apart from the many other companies in this space. Our aim now is to be the preferred one-stop shop for directory publishers and directory assistance providers for outsourced media technology solutions online, on wireless and on voice.”

The two companies formed a business partnership in 2006 and have several joint initiatives in progress. The closing of the transaction is subject to additional closing conditions and is currently expected to close in the second quarter of 2008.

Off to the Beach – plus a few links to check

I am going on a holiday with the family to the beach in Portugal. Yeah! This means no posts for at least a week…

 Some links to check:

• Another example of why YPs are doomed
• Marchex report on local -worth downloading
• Second click debate at SES
• AOL re-org – looks like more stuff that creates opps for the likes of G, M and FIM

And this from Looksmart today – about time they got geo sorted!

LookSmart is excited to announce that Geo-Targeting is now available in the AdCenter. Login to your account now and take advantage of this new feature.

Targeting Down to the City-Level
Take your LookSmart camaigns further with a spectrum of Geo-Targeting options: Country, State/Province, Metropolitan Area, and City-level targeting help you hit your desired targets.

Reporting, Regardless
Whether or not you implement Geo-Targeting right away, you have the ability to see where your clicks are coming from in the AdCenter reports. Take advantage of these reports to gain valuable insight into your campaigns AND customers.

Geo-Targeting Explained
Geo-Targeting is a tool that allows advertisers to focus PPC advertising campaigns on the geographic location of their desired customers. Furthermore, advertisers who focus on local advertising can buy popular, head of the query stream keywords and have them displayed exclusively in the local regions they do business in.

Here’s Google’s logo for the 1st day of spring. In London today the wather sucks, so lets hope PT is better. Have a great Easter and Happy Spring!

Mid-Week Round-Up for 23 Jan 08 – misc interesting, cool bits & pieces

Well, its only the middle of the work week and there has been a lot of interesting stories and posts already. More stuff than I can keep up with. Here are some of the tidbits I think are interesting…

No, Google Won’t Buy the NYT. But Google.Org Could – I like this mini-post form John Battle’s search blog. I completely agree, lets put and keep the best news organizations in a trust. Living in the UK you sort of take it for granted, but I gotta say the BBC rocks and papers like The Irish Times and The Guardian also very cool and not run to make a profit for share holders.

Search Stocks & The Stock Crash: GOOG, YHOO & MSFT – this post is over on SEL. My opinion is all 3 of the majors are solid. I’ve got to think ad dollar$ continue to go into search during a down turn year, but that probably display gets hurt… This means Google could fair a bit better overall but they still have to finish the DoubleClick deal and they are still way over valued. I would sell GOOG short, hold YHOO or buy if it dips under $17 and buy MSFT all the way its cheap . Disclaimer: do NOT trust my stock tips. This is just fun.

The parent company of WordPress – Automattic – secures B round funding – this report from the NYT. Great news. I love WordPress! Related to this is a post by Greg Sterling – Harnessing Blogs for Local – this one has got me thinking about new micro-publishing mash-up business ideas… More on that after a few more beers.

Enteprise search provider Endeca closed funding from SAP and Intel – this over on TC. This interesting in light of the MSFT FAST deal and the Sun MySQL deal. Doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but lets see what happens with Endeca. I keep wondering when will someone do a “redhat” version of open source Lucene?

Internet Trumps Print Directories in Britain – this post again fro Mr Sterling based on a neat report from UK based welovelocal. I Love it, lets recycle all those print directories! Save the trees.

Publishers’ vertical search can rival Google, says AOP forum – not sure I agree, but I have to say job well done to my buddy Simon Baptist who gave one of the presentations. My sources tell me he did a great job. Nice one!