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.

Another Social Media Slideshare Deck

Ok, maybe we are going a little bit social media mad here on MediaViking island. We can’t help ourselves with Twitter growing faster than a Saturn V rocket on the way to the moon. Plus all the good research/discussions going on around how we converse, tweet and retweet as well – and somre more here and here. This all adds to our conviction that we still have a lot to learn about how socia media works and its going to be fun.

So, I was out pitching another social media marketing project to a very interesting high street shop. Well its more than just a shop and it should prove to be a great vertical case study and successfulon social media… But I can’t say anymore yet in order to protect the innocent. As part of this pitch I threw together a very rough and ready intro deck to socail media and an outline pilot plan (note:  some slides have been edited out).

In the spirit of the new socialism I am posting up this deck to share:

Top 100 Websites for 2009 from The Guardian

The Guardian had a nice top 100 websites list in yesterday’s tech sections - worth checking out (note: its a UK centric list). I guess AFV should come with out own top website review one of these days. In the meantime its interesting to note the top picks in the ‘location, location’ category by the Guardian – Qype is gaining traction for sure, yet they don’t seem to register in ComScore (wonder why?).

Location, location

Services like these blossom with a mobile phone that can access the internet

Dopplr dopplr.com “share your future travel plans with friends and colleagues”, then find out if others will be there too.

Qype qype.com localised search for pubs, restaurants, etc; also a bit of a social network.

Loopt loopt.com “transforms your mobile phone into a social compass”.

Brightkite brightkite.com a “location-based social network”.

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!

Qype Stickers in London

Last week while getting my lunch I noticed my 1st Qype sticker in the window of the restaurant – Just Falafs. I am not sure how long Qype has been promoting this to businesses but it follows a similar strategy to Google Maps and Yelp. Qype is a local reviews and information site with user generated content and social media angle – it is basically a European Yelp and also competes with the likes of Trusted Places (which is A Fuller View favourite!)… All I can say is this is more fuel for bye bye Yellow Pages which no bad thing…

Globrix.com using car advertising

We saw this car on Parsons Green in west London last week – the Globrix Car. Pretty good way to advertise. We’d like to know if this a one off or are their a fleet of these cars? Nice to see its a small economical and probably pretty ‘green’ car.

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.