Seeing Forests

We’ve published a White Paper on The Local Graph™ and Trajectory™ on Brilliant Arc. The Local Graph™ models all of the networks in a “Local Economy” from the social networks to the place networks to the business networks - all the people, places, and things in a Local Marketplace. We discuss how the Local Graph™ is a much needed model for computing environments to provide solutions in a Local Economy “problem domain”. We then go on to show how are patent-pending Local Knowledge Platform, Trajectory™ models the Local Graph™ and how it can be used in the competitive market for Local Economy solutions to deliver a sustainably differentiated competitive advantage.

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So, this post from Techcrunch about Google tweaking their algorithms caught my attention. Seeing some of these sites like Demand Media possibly being reduced in rankings will have quite an effect on businesses in this space. I wonder what kind of effect this might have on Local as well.

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Following up on my personal reflection, AI - You’ve Come A Long Way Baby, I thought I’d toss my 2 cents in about AI and Local. In AI parlance, the “domain of discourse” drives what can be done with an AI or expert system (haven’t used that phrase in decades). Traditionally, the narrower the domain, the more tractable an AI system for handling problems in it. Before, such systems had to be quite narrow indeed - diagnosing problems in a particular engine component or provisioning parts for filling customer orders. The ability for successful AI work in Natural Language processing also required strict limitations not only on the domain but also on problem structure. I worked on a project for Caterpillar that translated technical manuals semi-automatically into different language dialects with good success it seemed at the time. What #Watson accomplished shows just how far we’ve come in loosening the restrictions on both domain and structure. When people start looking at what kinds of things #Watson can do next, medical assistance and call center support, frankly Local looks ripe for AI in this regard. Seems like answering questions like “upscale restaurant with an intimate bar and maybe a fireplace” are even more tractable than answering questions like “should I be worried about this small mole on my elbow”.

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Great issue for the Harvard Business Review with great article about Branding in the Digital Age. Takes the old Consumer Buying Behavior “funnel” model (one that I’ve always been fond of) and warped it for the digital age. First time I’ve seen social media rightly placed into a proper consumer behavior model (and not the other way around). They’ve added to the old Consider/Evaluate/Buy funnel another post-purchase loop, one they call Enjoy/Advocate/Bond. Not really down with the terminology necessarily but I do like the overall move from the Consumer Purchase Model to the Consumer Decision “Journey”. Lots of useful bon mots in here including their advocating that today’s marketer needs to focus on both their “owned” media (company websites) and “earned” media (blogs, yada). Nice distinction there. When you expand the concept of media to include all digital assets the marketer can control (such as product descriptions) then you see how that owned media is relevant to the Consider/Evaluate/Buy part of the journey whereas earned media is relevant to the Enjoy/Advocate/Bond loop. What I also liked was the advocacy of the development of a “content supply chain” management system to ensure that marketers have as much control over their owned content as possible, such as product models and descriptions, across third-party sites. Developing an independent knowledge management capability leads the modern marketer to develop an “agile content” system, extracting key decision-making content from embedded web sites and ensuring that content is available in multiple forms for use in multiple media experiences. Overall, I think the article says a lot about where offers should properly appear for the consumer (more at the purchase touchpoint, less in the social media experience), where reviews should properly appear (more in the social media experience, less at the purchase touchpoint), and where “source of record” product descriptions should appear (everywhere and linked to “owned” media). I may be over-simplifying things but at least this kind of robust consumer behavior profiling is more about what should be driving our collective strategies than the usual Local/Social/Mobile gobblydeegook.

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Just got back from the Interactive Local Media 2010 conference (#ILM10) presented by Kelsey. Was a great conference from BIA Kelsey Group. The show was so well subscribed I was allocated to another hotel (which is another story). The people were the best and the interaction was excellent. I’m always a fan of presentations that present data and there were a number of these. Some great breakdowns of Local usage by Comscore. The most interesting number that hit me was some 48% of small businesses have Facebook Place pages. Still trying to digest that one. Of course, love to see a category breakdown (believe Massage Therapists might lead the list) but never seem to have that forthcoming. A little background on the survey methods would be great (and I’ll try to find them).

I think the most interesting topic was the one that wasn’t addressed - Google Place Pages and their implications for third-party listing contribution. Peanuts thrown in the hallway, Elephant left room. Google said folks could talk to them outside later. Don’t believe any such conversations took place. Was a little disappointed in the Facebook Local presentation. Emily White was surprised so many people knew about Facebook Place Pages. Hello? Know your audience, sunshine. Didn’t need another - “Like, Oh My God. Friends are so cool. They’re all you need to make local decisions”. Not.

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With Google Place Pages enhanced direction, it becomes increasingly controversial regarding the use of directory content (and even the business themselves) as to who has the final “say” in even basic business content. The tension comes from what interested parties say about a business and what the Net says about a business. Google is in the unique position of being able to say “all we’re doing is summarizing what the Net says” about a business. That this is in the “greater interest” of the consumer, it is by no small coincidence in Google’s greater interest as well. In many ways, Google IS the Net, and they are only feeding what the algorithms demand. It’s not us, it’s the network we’re all serving. The fear is, just like Skynet, that the “Algorithms” (upper case, looks like “Almighty”), will of necessity at some point say third party information is not only no longer needed, but a threat to the Net, and so eliminated. In this stage of evolution, the equivalent of nuclear annihilation will be link elimination. Just like any good Algorithm, have to take things one step at a time.

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Really enjoyed the New York Times article on Zagat. Greg made some thoughtful comments that helped structure the overall issues: On the web - not showing in Google results pages requires a lot more investment in brand management to offset the lower traffic. On the phone, finding the right mix of features, content and experience is the challenge. Having more brand investment may not have helped out on the web but will on the phone. So maybe as the main thesis of the article goes, Zagat might get another chance on mobile. But the one thing that didn’t really come out in all of this is the brand itself, probably best captured in the preamble profile - “that maroon color is now trademarked.” Maroon. Not the Looney Tunes kind of “maroon”, you ignoramus, but the graduated from Yale, passed out to officers of the bank, everybody smart that looked at this kind of “maroon”. Basically, this is a brand for snobs from snobs. And as a 21st century snob, I’m just not feeling the 20th century maroon. And more than that, in this economy for the foreseeable future, I can only see a continuing decline in the need for finding more exclusive restaurants more frequently and a continuing increase in the options for finding more exclusive restaurants more freely. The nature of curated content in this day and age is going to determine the success of the subscription models to that content. Curated content can be characterized by a number of factors, such as the perishability of the content, the difficulty in obtaining that content, and degree of competition for providing that content. In this context Newspaper articles starts to look attractive. Restaurant reviews, not so much. I think the only real problem with Zagat are, frankly, the Zagats themselves.

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Not sure if that’s how you spell Schmeels but I like it. Anyway, as Greg points out in his post The Problem with Facebook Deals (with a little, let’s say, more grown-up way of summarizing my comment in a previous post on the subject), the problem with all of these local deals is the fundamental lack of a robust user experience in regards to helping people actually use them. I went off in his Facebook Deals will Rock Local where I questioned what possible use is there in giving me the nearest 15 businesses with the random hope that one of them might have deal associated with them (even if I was just thinking, hey, I’m on Fourth and Osborne, maybe I should get a new accountant). Greg points out that all of these apps aren’t taking into account real use cases, like where I am, what I’m looking for now, what I might be looking for later, how far I might be willing to go for a particular deal, etc. The whole problem with the apps is that they really can’t do these kinds of things, given how they (and really the industry as a whole) invariably approaches the problem - algorithmically. What they are able to do is get the user’s location, do a radius search, find the first 15 nearest businesses (because that’s the limit on the screen length), go into a database, find any coupons that match those businesses, and spew the results out. They don’t take into account your “intent” (is that an integer or a string?) and they don’t take into and “knowledge” of local (an accountant is a restaurant is a florist is a business, who cares). Since this is actually a “hard problem” the solution is to ignore it and pass out bright shiny objects (ooh, “I’m a Mayor!”) so they can distract users from that actual truth in that have no $*&(#**% idea how to do local. Now, Greg is optimistic that this will all work out and he’s probably right. When you have cadres of PhDs and acres of computing power you’ll probably figure it out. Like monkeys and Hamlet.

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Was browsing through iPhone apps for Micro Local sites (I refuse to use the term Hyper Local - tried to get William Safire to weigh in on two terms but he mysteriously died right after). Lots of interesting takes, like for Reston Town Center and the Minneapolis Skyway along the “area” dimension and, of course, for Target and McDonalds along the “brand” dimension. I had never seen (alert! heavy home page) PointInside that focuses on airports and malls either. Not all of them have good reviews but it was a little refreshing to see other than the usual list of nearby “category” oriented apps, with bars, restaurants, and coffee shops.

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After the Kelsey conference a couple of weeks ago, I was interested in one of the speakers from CityGrid making some claims about their being one of the providers for local along with Google and Facebook. Thought I’d check out what was going on with their developer site. Frankly, didn’t find a lot of activity there. Admittedly, I didn’t get into a lot of depth but another quick glance showed most posts seemed to be a couple of weeks old. I might not be seeing what’s actually going on though. Still, if you’re going to be a big provider of local (I think through a “Local Tags” program - coming soon) there would be comparable activity to other developer API usage. Like I said, maybe just missing where the action is.

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