Seeing Forests

Michael Bauer’s Look at Local/Mobile/Social

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Knowledge Centered

September 20th, 2010 by admin
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Just got back from the Directional Media Strategies 2010 conference hosted by Kelsey Group. Their central theme was that Directional Media Publishers (I’ll defer to their definition but certainly encompasses traditional Yellow Page companies) need to move from a “Business Listing” centric view to a “Web Site” centric view for their ventures. To me, this just seems so “2010″. Which by that I mean, is this forward or backward thinking? Or maybe both? The real message here is that “DMPs”, in Kelsey parlance, need to take a strategy that supports a range of efforts to provide enhanced value on behalf of their customers. Fair enough as there does seem to be a valid value proposition for providing scaled support for things like SEO, SEM, Video production, Call tracking, and all kinds of other services.

My issue comes around the Web Site as being at the center of this proposition. Maybe my problem is that I’m too much of technologist and too prone to take things literally but I think we need a little “back to the future” here. The Business Listing is no longer sufficient in today’s world as being the “center” but I think we may have jumped ahead to thinking the Web Site should be the new center. I guess my training has taught to separate content from presentation and when I hear Web Site I see perfectly good structured content being swirled up with all kinds of good structured layout and as a result losing all of it. Of course, Google comes along and pulls everything back out and makes it searchable but aren’t we losing a lot in the process? It’s kind of like taking a bunch of ingredients, making a cake, and then boiling that cake in a distillation tower to get the ingredients back out.

To me, it seems like DMPs need to really focus on their content services apart from their web sites to anticipate a world where applications are many, distributed and not all theirs. While the rage is all about Facebook and Twitter I guarantee you they are not the last calls at the end of history. Other things are going to come along very soon (like Scvngr for gaming?). On the other hand, I don’t think these content services need to be the Semantic Web either. They don’t need to start out by being anything but well-documented web services designed to serve multiple applications. Sure, there are a lot of things like microformats and open data protocols but these are more frosting than batter. To break with the cake analogy it’s about ecosystems, not architectures. You have to start thinking organically, not structurally.

But, you know, I have a vested interest in this because this is the kind of thing we do. Maybe you can just throw up whatever you like and Google will suck it all up and not lose any information. Of course, like a black hole, you might not be able to get out what you put into it - Google has other universes to create. Do you care? Does it matter?

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Best Buy, Shopkick, and Velociraptors

August 16th, 2010 by admin
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As Techcrunch reports in “Best Buy Rolls Out Shopkick’s Geo-Coupon System To 257 Stores” we get to start seeing that scene from Minority Report screen-shot-2010-08-16-at-105239-am come to life, although instead of seductive avatar asking about some new unmentionables, we get a a-buzzing and a-you-got-mail, er coupon message chirping on your phone. To me, this raises the question not of “Net Neutrality” but of “Net Ubiquity” and whether I as a consumer (or a business) will need to be locked into a proprietary technology/platform to access these deals. Sure, Shopkick should do all it can to try to establish this kind of a monopoly but monopolies aren’t in the general interest. Just as those zany Velociraptors found a way on Jurassic Park, so to will these deals find a way that won’t be corralled to one private network.

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Online 2 Offline - Nothing to see here, move along

August 7th, 2010 by admin
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Recent Techcrunch post “Why Online2Offline is a Trillion Dollar Opportunity” essentially tries to differentiate the admittedly exploding market for online coupons into some kind of brand new market segment that’s fundamentally different from the online directories - not. The whole goal of the online directories is to drive consumers from an online experience to offline purchase. And they do so in myriad ways of which coupons are only a fraction and part of an overall mix. Different segments require different marketing incentives - not a lot of coupons for Doctors. Directories offer full-service online programs for the entire market but they’re all about getting people from their computer to their phone and finally to the front door (whether the local florist or their own door for the plumber). The reason we see the success of all these sites is two-fold. First, it’s because there are still clear opportunities for “horizontals” - sites that focus on one thing in the consumer behavior mix ala Yelp for reviews, Open Table for reservations - because it is a challenge to do all things well for all segments. And, two, technology is catching up to facilitate more complex behaviors online. Just providing a “payment method” doesn’t magically define some new market segment. As a side note, I don’t think there are many of us in the directory space that consider Yelp a directory but, hey, like Greg says, we’ve only been saying this for a decade so who am I to pontificate. I just don’t get to say it (or is it pay for it) on Techcrunch.

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Google Small Business Blog

August 5th, 2010 by admin
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Google just introduced a Small Business Blog that promises to to bring together all of their details about managing a Place Page. Just what the mythical small business needs. :)

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IFC and Foursquare

August 5th, 2010 by admin
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Rather a long time between posts but more on that later. Saw a strange take on local. It seems that IFC (International Film Channel) and Foursquare are teaming up to promote and solicit “Always On, Slightly Off” local venues. Apparently IFC “celebrities” are going to make recommendations for venues like sushi bars with “with monkey waiters in tutus” and the like. What the business driver here is a bit beyond me but it’s an interesting merger of local.

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Kelsey Marketplaces 2010

March 17th, 2010 by admin
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Looking forward to catching up with everyone and talking about what Brilliant Arc is up to in 2010.  Nice to have something to talk about instead of talking about talking about something sometime.

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Google Maps Around Here

February 12th, 2010 by admin
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Saw Greg post about the New Google Maps Lab tab at the top of Google Maps now.  Just zeroing in on the “Around Here” feature which does a “*” wildcard search around your current location and shows the top results.  Grabbed a snapshot below.  screen-shot-2010-02-12-at-72449-amThat certainly clears things up.  :)  Seems like more of a case of “we can, so let’s” instead of something that’s got a driving use case behind it.

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Original Check In

January 9th, 2010 by admin
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I’ve been wondering about this for a little bit.  I’ve always thought the notion of “checking in” digitally to some place via a local social service like BrightKite or FourSquare to be a particularly novel behavior enabled by mobile Internet technologies.  I’ve just wondered who came up with it first.  I only ever saw it first with BrightKite but being that I’m not the most social guy, I may have missed it somewhere else.  And I don’t count online check in for airlines here.

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iPhone Dog Nexus Cat

January 7th, 2010 by admin
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After playing around with the Nexus One for a while, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Nexus is a cat and the iPhone is a dog.  The iPhone is just warm and fuzzy and wants to jump up in your lap and lick your face.  Nexus One, with it’s little “shrug” every time you hit the back button, is cool and sleek and wants to jump up off your lap and flick its tail and remind you that ultimately, in the long run, it doesn’t need you.

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Google Local on Nexus One

January 7th, 2010 by admin
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Following a tweet from Greg, and Sebastien, and now the post on Read/Write Web, I went to the Google built-in browser on the Nexus One to try out Google’s “Near Me Now”.  I don’t quite get why Marshall at RW says this doesn’t bode well for the likes of Yelp and NextStop (can someone say, Local Guides?).  The site is pretty pedestrian; the production values pretty plain.  Of course, if you’ve read Google’s PlaceRank patent, you’d be expecting this.  They’re providing a list of most popular categories for canned searches that drive to result pages with links to their Place Pages.  Got to tell you, though, results are quite good and I’ve always liked their Place Pages so if all you ever want is what everyone else always wants, you’re in good shape here.  I can’t help but believe that there’s still more to answering the question to what’s “Near Me Now” than what’s behind a list of Google-blue international standard icons for restaurants, lodging, and shopping.

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