We’ve grown up to view online business reviews and recommendations as something that gets accumulated into organized sources of browsable content. TripAdvisor and Yelp represent two highly successful cases-in-point of the power of critical mass to reviews.

The dominating model of shopping behavior goes something like this…

search > initial select > search again for opinion to test your decision > transact

As noted in Search Engine Watch, “the search continues because search engines aren’t the consumer’s most trusted source of advice”. As we all know, we’re spending more and more time socially connected.  This creates a new whole stepping off point for shopping behavior. In theory, the potential exists to invert the experience and infuse trust and recommendations into the front end of shopping.

when your friends are always live

So, as the new generation of  live + social + local approaches – will it make these models increasingly obsolete?  It’s creeping up on us – perhaps the most visible example today is seeing your friends instantly react to your Facebook posts from their desktop and mobile positions. Clearly, your social graph is a live organism, becoming more and more ready to add value to your shopping experience every day.

But, do we really believe NextWeb’s headline? “Facebook Acquires NextStop, It’s Lights out for Yelp“. The message is basically that once Facebook turns up it’s Question application for organized Q&A, it will begin accumulating opinion at a breakneck pace, and facilitate personalized opinion content and live Q&A with your social graph.  Combining this initiative with the team who created Nextstop, and you begin to get a picture of how Facebook aims to collect and apply a richer model of relevant opinion content.

inside or out?

Facebook’s bold Open Graph move, to invert itself and be embedded into any web site or service, implies that it’s a neutral party in the question of “where will the consumer prefer to engage”.  To their credit, Yelp boldly stepped forward, with a Microsoftesque “embrace and extend”  approach with this new dev utility.  Yelp is clearly aiming to extend the lead it has with a large base of consumers and their organized opinions. It’s model will allow you to integrate your own social graph and sift and interact with your friends viewpoints, whenever you want.  Best of both worlds is the theory.

Facebook will ratchet up its owned and operated product approach to live question services. As NextWeb implies, Facebook will probably aim to convince consumers to not bother “stepping outside” to the Yelp consumer experience, employing low resistance user experience techniques together with some new tricks (virtual currency, etc.).   Since opinion content is most valuable for a few months to a couple of years (depending on the category) an advantage today can systematically fade with time.

The evolution of both of Yelp and Facebook  on the parallel inside vs. outside paths will indeed be worth watching closely, as a bellwether for the evolution of socially-engaged local shopping.  And, it will presumably shed a leading light onto Facebook’s “neutrality” position and business model.

I was pleased and excited to see this week’s launch of Public Earth’s website.  Not just because it’s the home of a small cadre of friends that I knew would build something very interesting, but because I believe in the fundamental premise underlying Public Earth.

The Twitter synopsis of Public Earth sums it up nicely.

We’re the Wiki For Places, dedicated to delivering interesting, unique, and up-to-date place information in a personalized way.

after world domination

The scale of product investment and advancement commitment from Google and Microsoft in mapping these past five years has been truly impressive.  These brands deservedly unseated MapQuest’s sleepy position by moving the ball forward on user experience, on multi-dimensional content, and on developer tools.

Fact is though, we’re still at the utilitarian consumption stage in geo-experience, and the very thing that creates their current world domination could well be what weighs down their forward progress.  The “Anchor Tenants” of the consumer geo universe, perhaps. [for fun: Google = Walmart, MapQuest = Kmart, and Microsoft so wants to be Target].

deep ruts in the road

The major map services have build their positions on consumption of maps as created and presented by them to the consumer.  While Google can legitimately point to the MyMaps success, I’d suggest that 1) this is pavlovian behavior driven by the necessity/greed/leverage of SEO, way more than it is socially energized participation, and 2) as I’ve written before, Google is so poor in social user experience, it’s just painful to watch.

The real action on the horizon inverts mapping into a paradigm of user creation and crowdsourcing the collective knowledge of places, and creating maps that are at once personal and shared.  There is a thriving new ecosystem in formation that is decidedly different and unique, and it’s natively social and participative.

Sites as deeply entrenched in consumer habit as MapQuest and Google can be severely challenged when it comes to materially morphing their brand. Orkut was indeed a fine piece of social technology.  Nuf said? 

Google’s mapping pathway seems to be driven by its dominating mastery of a fully owned and operated local advertising stack. Undoubtedly, this is core to their investments in local map content.  The route that elevated Google Maps to its front line position could very well be what holds it back from jumping the next shark.

the people’s voice recorder

Someone has to step up and power the collection of the true local voice. Yes, Google is well positioned to be aggregating this content, but (my sense) is that the developer community is 1) on to the impact of Google’s increasingly controlling hand and squashing foot, and 2) leaning forward for an open alternative. This is unlikely to be “one place” that forms this, but rather a connected collective.

The people have not yet spoken, and the businesses that unlock and turn loose this voice will indeed become major playas in the mobile/social/local ecosystem.

under the earth

Public Earth has taken a long cycle of development to do many things that are elegantly tucked behind a nice user experience.  The back office is much more interesting than the presentation, in my opinion.  To developers using their API, it presents what I consider to be a deep and well thought out geo content management system. As Google educates the world on the concept of a Place Page, Public Earth sits ready as the engine for a parallel path, powered by the people.

I’d posit that each and everyone of us has “50 maps inside” of us. You have history, you have local context, you’ve got highly tuned very personal experiences. All but a minute sliver of this has been recorded. Opening this up feels very unlike what we do in mapping services today.

In the massive collective “mother earth reclamation project”, Public Earth wants to take a lead role.  I hope it finds a place of active cooperation with Open Street Map and a dozen related open initiatives quickly gathering steam.  If it does, it will be indeed be one to watch.

It feels like everywhere I turn there is yet another media company paying writers to crank out search engine friendly content, in thinly veiled attempts to please the google bots.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years looking into the content gaps in converting local to an informed and useful shopping experience. The quest for deeper local content is on the order of a holy grail epic challenge.

The standard by which most publishers currently seem to be approaching their content strategy is “whatever the google bot rewards”.

the inch deep dilemma

I REALLY get the business case for hiring cheap writers and blogging and writing the heck out of a category or place.  I’ve done it myself.  Having “been there” however, I also know that this kind of writing rarely drives community OR anything but transitory, tactical commerce actions.

Fact of the matter is, bots are dumb, people are smart.

For the most part, what I’ve seen scattered throughout local media sites is disingenuous and obvious content that rarely informs a consumer shopping decision.  To me, this runs a real risk that it will works against the (increasingly urgent) brand development needs of the media business. Authenticity is something consumers are seeking, and rewarding with loyalty and social media “juice”.  Conversely, gratuitous content diminishes the appeal of a site/brand.

If this is simply treated as “air cover” while a real hyper local or vertical content strategy is executed, than I’m ALL FOR IT.  However, to make this “THE content strategy” for a local media publisher is a dangerous and problematic approach.

At the end of the day, this is at the heart of a real core business identity issue for many local media companies.  It’s time to think like a consumer publisher, not (just) a traffic hungry sales channel.  Chasing consumers through the lens of a Google bot will blur your vision and stunt your growth in the long run.

Local Matters announced some exciting news today.  It’s a go-live announcement for a partnership with the largest MLS company in the US market, MRIS.

It’s exciting for several reasons.  It certainly shows off our local search platform to be a flexible and engaging web application platform for vertical local search, which is a trend I strongly believe in.  Check out HomesDatabase.com.  More importantly, it begins to plot a course towards a critical new trend in online real estate – the movement towards richer true local marketplaces for agents and consumers.

Shopping for a new home is one of the most intensive of all the online consumer experiences.  Consumers are totally engaged, and the amount of time spent in online research is amazing.

The content underlying the best possible user experience resides in the local MLS systems AND in the minds of the local agent network.  Historically, the MLS has done little in consumer-facing services, while online real estate shopping has significantly evolved via the national efforts of NAR/Move Inc. and its competitors, alongside a variety of web services provided to individual brokers and agents.

The role and value of the MLS is a topic in hot debate within the online real estate industry. Today, you have a disconnected process of agent listing publishing, lead generation, and consumer search and agent interaction.  Further, the consumer is not served by the “collective intelligence” that exists in the local real estate community.  Localizing and leveraging this is the mantra to which the local MLS can forge a valuable agenda. To me, this agenda is highly complementary to the Realtor(c) brand mission to sustain and evolve the agent’s value proposition.

MRIS, the largest and one of the most forward-looking MLS’s in the country, has taken a leadership role in demonstrating the progression of MLS from back-office to a more holistic and valuable local partner to it’s members.  This first step begins to fully exploit the deep content and connections that exist locally.

It will be interesting to see how the MLS evolves in the online real estate landscape.  Personally, I think it has the potential to be a very critical piece of the puzzle.  Real Estate shopping is inherently local.  As consumers demand applications to become more interactive and conversational, this deep local knowledge infrastructure will be critical to success.

Congratulations to MRIS on a meaningful, forward-looking move!

An excerpt of my comments are copied below, to hopefully whet your appetite.  Join the conversation on Greg’s site, it’s a quality debate.

…In particular, I think you capture the essence of why web search is struggling with relevance models for local content, and why user-based content forms the most practical proxy for link logic in Local.

I would add that, IMHO, the task of Local Search, particularly for service based businesses, is to winnow down to a short list. I believe it is fundamentally impractical to collect sufficient decision-making content to go from a short-list to a definitive selection. To me, this is where a new generation of conversational and contextual technologies kick in. The consumer wil invariably – as you point out – do their ultimate selection on a range of personal factors. Scheduling convenience and negotiated pricing may be capable of being automated, but not by “the masses” for a very long time. Consumers may also be aided by video tools, in assessing whether they want a specific service person into their house, but again, this is an exception not the rule.

The final mile of Local Search, where a short list converts into a selection/transaction remains one of the most interesting unsolved problems.

Finally, I’d add that one other dimension of local search – wherein consumers purchase patterns are driven by special offers – is another fascinating unsolved piece of the puzzle.  Google’s current lame foray into coupon aggregation and display is not even close to addressing the opportunity….

]]> http://www.evansink.com/2009/02/a-noteworthy-conversation/feed/ 1 http://www.evansink.com/2009/02/hail-marriage/ http://www.evansink.com/2009/02/hail-marriage/#comments Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:33:26 +0000 perry http://www.evansink.com/?p=9

image credit: motherjones.com

Somehow, the time feels right for some fresh/absurd, Hail Mary thinking when it comes to evolution in the troubled Local Media landscape.

When I look at the problems infecting two major sectors of local media  – newspapers and yellow pages – an idea springs to mind.  Try it on…

Slam them together into one integrated local media business.  Collapse redundant distribution and operations, re-align and trim the sales forces. Infuse the newspaper’s strength with promotion and retail into the scalable SEM/search infrastructure of the YP channel.  Construct a true local consumer portal and promotion channel that has local search and promotion embedded throughout.  Trim out the low-value display ad junk and create real local shopping applications that generate leads and solve consumer problems.

In the off-chance that you’re still reading, perhaps I can explain my thinking a bit more.

Newspapers have a deep infrastructure for collecting and publishing local content for consumers. Sure, there are increasing content challenges, but consumption of online newspapers continues to rise, their share of local usage is deep, and the brand is still meaningful to mainstream consumers.

The problem with newspapers is their defunct revenue model.  Newspapers simply don’t have the business foundation to sustain a position in the future local media landscape.

Yellow Pages print and distribute a publication whose relevance to consumers is systematically deteriorating. Yet, they are fundamentally succeeding in becoming a dominating agent for hundreds of thousands of local advertisers in commercial search, and are beginning to execute on the key growth segments of mobile and video.

If you take the traffic generating foundation of the newspaper industry, and combine it with the revenue and sales engine of YP, you may just have a sustainable ecosystem that can invest more in local online publishing, make commercial use of scads of truly local content, and actually sustain a viable local media publishing empire.

The Newspaper Picture

Newspapers have a terminally ill business model.  Feel good placebos continue to be dished out, but the effects of the disease have become so apparent that it’s not worth discussing anymore.  The classified ship has sailed, and the remaining ad math simply does not compute.

Newspapers missed Search, and the resources/effort required to catch up is fantasy league fodder – investment capital is non-existent.

The Yellow Pages Picture

Yellow Pages is not, and never was, a true consumer publishing business.  It is an amazing engine for selling, placing and distributing local advertising.  The utility and performance of the websites owned and operated by YP businesses is floundering, and long-term sustainability carries very real risk.

YP publishers did not miss the search shift.  The channel and tools are being systematically constructed for selling ad products into a scaled network of owned & operated properties, partner sites, and SEM-based distribution.

The Combined Business Case

The newspaper publishing infrastructure is something to build on. Yellow Pages has a viable business model as a scaled local sales channel, but their future as a consumer publisher is open to debate.

The improved margin that comes with owned/operated consumer traffic is critical to the composite business case. If YP cannot sustain this role, it risks a continued margin erosion to “channel-only” margins.

Add to this the fact that newspapers have the best current ad position in retail and promotion-based ad spending.  As these budgets are morphing into lead gen packages in online and mobile media, working from the newspaper’s pole position further sweetens the synergies.  Newspapers have the relationship, but lack the products/distribution infrastructure; YP fills in the blanks.  In a down economy, measurable promotions will be one of the most promising elements of online advertising.

Could this effect happen any other way? Sure, in theory, but I think you have to look inside the fabric of these organizations.  The DNA of a newspaper is editorial and promotion centric, and the DNA of Yellow Pages is sales and distribution based.    The pressures on both of these business make it enormously difficult to be championing reinvention investments from the inside.

Hey, isn’t it more fun to read wedding announcements than obituaries?

So….is this scenario really THAT far-fetched?