Seeing Forests

Read/Write Web has a piece on Bizzlr (I was going to rank on it’s name but my company is Koano so I don’t have any room to talk).  I searched for it on Facebook, installed it, and gave it a starting city.  It prompted me to search for a restaurant (Sushi Den, natch), was first hit and added it.  Found it, gave me a map, url, chance to win $1,000 and then prompted me to invite friends which I did.  After that, added a review (didn’t provide any from the aether).  This is kind of an obvious play (SMB 3rd party aggregator for social networks).  I only denigrate it that way because I didn’t have enough wherewithal to do something similar.

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Greg kind of buries a great exposition on this topic in Marchex Gains, Beats Estimate. He differentiates Local as NOT YP and also not about Long Tail (which has always galled me anyway). He states that Local is about “transactions and the point of sale.” He notes how e-commerce is a side-line player in Local (true) and how the “Product Location” companies (Where2GetIt, Krillion, NearbyNow) are going to have a real impact here. I’m not sure I’d characterize the Internet as a “consideration medium” (I’d say it’s more a “conflagration medium”) but when it helps connect online shopping (in the window sense of the word) with offline buying, that’s Local. I’m convinced that “Yellow” as a brand can move from locating businesses to locating products (and let’s not mince words about what’s a product - renting a hotel room and getting your car serviced are still products). I look at Local as disaggregating products from the businesses that provide them and supporting the consumer from search to pick-up of those products. As Greg points out, supporting that process will have to utilize media convergence (laptop to in-car to handheld) and a next-generation of mashup (maps and inventories). Yellow as a brand can encompass this I believe - don’t think there’s anything else the brand can support.

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I understand the differentiation between SME (Small-to-Midsize Enterprises) and SMB (Small-to-Midsize Businesses) in the “Reuvers Responds to ‘SMB Segmentation’” over at Screenwerk. It’s useful to differentiate the more abstract corporate entity (enterprise) from the actual brick-and-mortar business (establishment). This is how NAICS does things in their classification work. So, some companies (enterprises) have more than one business (establishment) whereas most mom-and-pop stores have one establishment per enterprise. Segmenting the advertising market based on number of establishments per enterprise makes sense.  I guess I can groove on the notion of segmenting the market based on brands by either a direct or a co-op spend but things do get a little blurry around “Best Buy” as Reuvers points out.  The thing to think about from this is looking at “de-constructing” YP as supporting facilitating brand vs business search.

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Seeing Yet Another Map Spam post, compelled me to finally post my updated Map Spam 2010 presentation.  I gave this at Where 2.0 a couple years ago but thought it’s becoming a bit more relevant (it used to be called MapSpam 2008).  It really just kind of begs the question about what is MapSpam?  Chatting with Greg, he raised the point that one person’s spam is another’s legitimate offer.  Right now, we only seem to have “Home” and “Personal” MapSpam thanks to Google Local and Google Maps on the Web and the iPhone.  Looking forward to “Mobile” MapSpam.  Can’t wait to get spammed on my onboard navigation system (which should be coming from Google anyday now).   Thanks to Perry for letting me post this.  

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It’s always kind of galled me that there never seems to be relevant advertising or even call-to-actions on Yahoo!  I finally look at an Event in Denver - a Wendy Woo concert.  I’m thinking that maybe I should get out to see a concert.  Really haven’t done that in a while.  I look around for information about going out, getting a ticket, getting a life.  No.  What I see is that I can grow my hair back.  As balding black man, I appreciate that but I was really interested in listening to a little blues. 

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I was recently conducting some on-the-ground content collection research, visiting the venerable Cherry Creek Mall and taking some snapshots of signs.  The mall cop came up and threatened me with arrest for invasion of privacy on private property.  He cited the threat in this day-and-age that apparently taking photos of signs has been linked to terrorism.  Imagine my dismay.  Unwittingly supporting terrorism by photographing Restoration Hardware signs.  Was funny but does raise a few questions.  Overall, what are my rights as a private citizen to do something like this in a mall.  Guess they are private property and they can throw me out for just about anything, yes (I’m an Obama supporter for example)?

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I’ve been reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It’s a slightly maniacal take about thinking correctly in a seemingly well-ordered but in reality utterly chaotic existence. At some level it’s about applying the scientific method to living. It’s well worth reading. At any rate, there’s a book he talks about in the book called The Tartar Steppes. It’s about this guy who gets assigned to this outpost in the steppes of Russia to defend against an attack by the Tartars. He starts out wanting to get out of there in few months but slowly but surely he falls in love with the place and starts to believe in his mission. He has hope that one day the Tartars will actually come and he will fight that epic battle. He stays for 35 years. One day, the Tartars do come, sweeping over the Steppes of Mother Russia. He’s apparently in a bar at the time.

I swear, I feel that way about AI, Knowledge Based Systems, and the Semantic Web. Apparently Yahoo has announced plans to start indexing the Semantic Web. Of course, the boys at Read/Write Web are besides themselves. I see all the potential for YP to sieze the day and start marking up their content with microformats and layering on an ontology capable of rudimentary inferencing.  This would be the reverse of Pandora’s Box.  I know I have the key to opening that box somewhere…

Oh, right.  I remember.  I left it in the bar.

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Apple just announced right on their home page the availability of the iPhone SDK.  Unfortunately, the site is swamped it seems.  Talk about changing Local, though.  Think of all those recession-proof iPhone users out there trying to find nearby pizzas…

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Yahoo’s FireEagle (what’s up with these names?), as Greg put it in FireEagle Success Depends on Scale, is like an OpenID for Location.  I like that turn of phrase and think it’s in the right ballpark.  Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/Write Web in Location Aware: Smart Rollout for Yahoo! Fire Eagle talks to this point as he credits Yahoo with using open standards such as oAuth for API authentication.  Using open standards does not an open standard make but it’s in the right direction.  Greg goes on to state that he thinks that the system will only be successful if a lot of people sign-on to use it first then developers will jump on it.  I think it’s really going to be the other way around.  Merely updating your location manually - “Twitter for Location” - as Michael A puts it in Yahoo’s “Twitter for Location” Goes into Private Beta with Near Zero Functionality is really not all that compelling in and by itself, especially coupled with privacy concerns (which Yahoo! seems to be dealing with quite well, however).  No, what’s really going to drive usage will be the developers and the applications first.  Applications like Dopplr and BrightKiteare providing reasons for people to post their physical location and that’s going to drive usage.  Yet another reason for YP companies to start providing Find Nearby APIs.  

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I’ve been in Europe off and on the last 6 months working on Local strategy in several countries.  The impact of culture and language in the use of the Internet on a local basis has been quite a good experience.   One thing I noticed is that the complexity of the North American market, for example the presence of aggregators like Trulia and SimplyHired, doesn’t seem to exist.  Individual country markets are too small and developing pan-European properties seem to be challenged by language and culture issues.  Seems like there may be an opportunity for an integrated European ex-pat aggregator but I may just be suffering from jet-lag trying to get a post out.  

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