Sebastien Provencher’s take on Local 2.0 : where local meets social
Praized Media’s CTO and co-founder Sylvain Carle is attending Where 2.0 conference this week in Burlingame. The conference is at the San Francisco Airport Marriott, right next door to SFO. If you’re attending and would like to connect, send him an e-mail at sylvain AT praized DOT com.
Posted in Conferences, Local, Local Search, where20 | No Comments »
I was doing more thinking about Rob Barrett’s Latimes.com presentation I heard at the Kelsey conference last week. The decision to re-center their online strategy around hyperlocal is one of the sanest, most courageous and possibly most difficult strategic decisions I’ve heard come out of a traditional media group in a long long time.
Why? I was re-reading this blog post conclusion I wrote 15 months ago, “In a few years, you might find only authoritative international newspaper brands (New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian, La Stampa, The Globe & Mail, etc.) and strong hyperlocal newspapers. All the ones in the middle will either have evolved or died.”
I suspect that building one of those big international newspaper brands is perceived as the holy grail of the newspaper industry and you can easily imagine that, for many years, the Los Angeles Times management team believed they would be one of those. Moving their online strategy to hyperlocal wasn’t a very sexy and exciting decision but it’s exactly what is needed to make the LA Times brand succeed online.
Posted in Conferences, Hyperlocal, Kelsey Group, Los Angeles Times, Newspapers | No Comments »
On the second day of the Kelsey Drilling Down 2008 Conference, we heard from Rich Barton, Chairman and CEO, Zillow. He exposed us to his thesis that lead to the various projects he’s been involved in in the last 10 years. Before founding Zillow, Barton founded Expedia when he was at Microsoft. His basic thesis is that transparency of information is power. This leads to a consumer revolution in various verticals, releasing things that were locked-up, especially around big financial decisions. He mentioned stockbroking, travel and real estate as three verticals that were forever altered by the arrival of the Web. He also mentioned three other companies he’s involved with in the following verticals: Legal (Avvo.com), Healthcare (Realself.com), and Employment (Glassdoor.com).
(picture: zillow.com)
He finished his presentation with a “Power to the people” manifesto that’s very telling in this user-generated content age:
Posted in Conferences, Expedia, Glassdoor.com, Kelsey Group, Local, Local Search, Microsoft, Realself.com, Travel, User-generated content, Vertical Search, Verticalization, Zillow, avvo.com | No Comments »
Very interesting first half-day yesterday at the Kelsey Group’s Drilling Down on Local ‘08. The theme of the conference is “Marketplaces”. It regroups products such as classifieds, auctions and vertical sites. Here are highlights from the first two sessions:
As an introduction, the Kelsey Group’s team provided us with some background information on “Marketplaces”. Neal Polachek first described the local end game as “better search, discovery, and engagement”. He even quoted the Cluetrain Manifesto’s “Markets are conversation”. He also talked about their latest global ad revenue forecast for 2007-2012, stating that the biggest category winner would be Internet and the biggest loser would be newspapers. As I wrote last week, the Kelsey group believes that Verticals will capture a large chunk of online advertising by 2012. Matt Booth then talked about three specific verticals (travel, automotive, home services) that have had a tremendous impact on offline/online business and media spending. For example, Matt showed two juxtaposed graphs showing the decline of newspapers’ automotive revenues vs. Autotrader.com’s revenue increase. Peter Krasilovsky finished the intro by stating that it’s now time to “uncouple” print and online media bundles. As print revenues decline, you need to have online-only ad products to compensate. Peter added that you also want to “verticalize” your offer to expand your revenues.
The second session “Remaking the Los Angeles Times (Online)” starred Rob Barrett, Senior VP of Interactive Media, GM, LATimes.com. He started by mentioning that most of what he’s currently working on is not very visible online now. He spent the first couple of years at the LA Times refocusing the online business. His main focus has been to build the display ad business (as opposed to classifieds). It’s going to generate $25M in revenues this year. Barrett says it’s now “time to finally break the newspaper paradigm online”. The LA Times’ online strategy needs to be local as opposed to national as it will allow them to differentiate their offer versus other “national” newspapers like the New York Times. They’ve realized that local users are key to online revenues as they generate more monthly page views and twice the display revenue per page views. Their product approach is “we want to own Los Angeles”, i.e. be integral to life of Angelinos, be the source of news and information about Los Angeles to the world and be an information retailer by creating, aggregating and curating LA content.
The Latimes.com web site is slowly transforming itself into a hyperlocal social network. All content pieces are going to be tagged and indexed by category and geography. By targeting on demographics and on geo, the LA Times is hoping to raise their average CPMs and improve ad effectiveness. They are creating the best targeting machine for the LA DNA. Barrett then showed us pilots of various new vertical sections that are very promising:
Posted in Automotive, Classifieds, Conferences, Hyperlocal, Kelsey Group, Local, Los Angeles Times, Matt Booth, Neal Polachek, New York Times, Newspapers, Peter Krasilovsky, Revenues, Social networks, Travel, Trends, Verticalization | 1 Comment »
After nine days in San Francisco for Web 2.0 Expo and a bunch of Praized Media partnership meetings, I’m now in Seattle for The Kelsey Group’s “Drilling Down on Local ‘08“.
If you’re interested in local search and you’re not here, you’re missing one of the most important North American conferences on the topic. I can only attend the first two days but I’m looking forward the following sessions:
If you’d like to meet, send me an e-mail at seb AT praized.com.
Posted in Conferences, Kelsey Group, Local, Local Search, Praized Media, Web2expo | No Comments »
Just listened to a video presentation from Jonathan Zittrain at Web 2.0 Expo. Jonathan holds the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University and is a principal of the Oxford Internet Institute. He just wrote a book called “The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It “
Zittrain suspects we’re getting close to the end of thirty years of “free” development around computers and the Internet. He sees the rise of “tethered appliances” like IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos as “the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners.” He also sees the rise of “platforms” (Google, Facebook, etc.) as centralized points that could potentially be disruptive to innovation. Finally, for him, things in the cloud (he gave Gmail as an example) are also a potential threat as users don’t control the information the way they use to when it was resident on their desktop.
What it means: I see those trends as well but I don’t think they’re new. It’s always been extremely profitable to build networks and closed systems. So, it’s not surprising to see a lot of companies going at it today. The second trend that Zittrain might be discounting is the rise of open source hardware. Organizations like BugLabs and OpenMoko are trying to crack that nut and keep hardware as open as possible.
Posted in Apple iPhone, BugLabs, Conferences, OpenMoko, Web2expo | 3 Comments »
The Praized founders (Harry, Sylvain and Seb) are attending Web 2.0 Expo this week in San Francisco. We just landed at SFO and are enjoying a sunny afternoon around Japantown (it’s the cherry blossoms festival). If anyone would like to connect while we’re in San Francisco, you can ping me at seb AT praized.com or call us at 514-299-6670. If you’re attending the conference, you can use this site to find cool places related to Web 2.0 Expo: Web2Places.com.
Posted in About, Conferences, Praized Media, Web2expo | No Comments »
MediaPost’s OnlineMediaDaily reports on a speech given by Team Detroit SVP Cary Tilds at CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas:
Mobile is mainstream–no longer emerging–which means advertisers and marketers need to be always on to reach consumers, according to Tilds, an executive from an agency created about a year ago combining JWT, Y&R Wunderman, Ogilvy and GroupM. “The more mobile data people use, the more they search, and I think it will continue to increase this way,” she said. “People are using mobile for impulse local searches, impulses, and restaurant and entertainment. Today, hotels make up about two thirds of the pay-per-call ads served.”
What do consumers search for on mobile phones? People look for local listings first–which gives smaller businesses an opportunity to reach a wider audience, followed by news and information, and mobile content. Tilds told conference attendees it’s not just about sending and receiving text, but rather about finding things online to consume.
What it means: mobile and local search, approaching a turning point. Will become strategic before the end of the year for anyone playing in the local search space. The merger of Local Matters and mobilePeople makes complete sense in that context.
Posted in Conferences, Local Matters, Local Search, Mobile | No Comments »
Just received a notice that the second edition of Startup Camp Montreal has been announced for May 15th at the Societe des Arts Technologiques (SAT). I attended the first edition and it was very interesting. More than 180 people showed up (140 entrepreneurs, 30 VCs and industry experts, 5 students and 5 organizers). I don’t think I’ll be able to attend as I will be in California that week but I definitely invite everyone interested in startups to register.
More info from the e-mail announcement:
Following the success of the first Startup Camp Montreal, we are happy to announce the second edition of the event scheduled for May 15th, 2008.
The second edition will be similar in format to the first with the following changes:
1) The top five startups selected to present at the event will have the opportunity to participate in a one-day pre-event workshop session. The goal being to have “pitch” experts help the companies prepare ahead of the event. The workshop will be hosted by Austin Hill, John Stokes, Vincent Guyaux, and 2 other VC / marketing experts.
2) Presenting companies will have 8 minutes to present, with 10 minutes of follow-up questions from the event Gurus and the audience.
3) We will have ambassadors on hand prior to the event and during the event to help with match making and networking.The complete details for the event are posted at www.startupcampmontreal.org, however the basics are:
Date: Thursday May 15th, 2008
Time: 6pm-10pm (or later)
Location: SAT (www.sat.qc.ca)Registration is required, so please go to http://startupcampmontreal2
.eventbrite.com to register.
Posted in Conferences, Montreal, StartupCamp | No Comments »
As I stated in my last yearly predictions, I think 2008 will be the year of identity, where we start solving the problem of having to create (and remember) multiple username/passwords to access all the sites we visit. A panel yesterday morning at SXSW08 offered us a glimpse into what could be THE solution for solving this issue: OpenID.
What is OpenID?
Why OpenID?
Yahoo! & OpenID
How to implement OpenID?
What it means: I think the consensus is that OpenID as a technology is ready to go, but it still lacks “marketing” and “user-friendliness”. Companies including Clickpass are trying to address that problem. See today’s coverage on Techcrunch for more details. Expect this technology to make waves in the next 12 -18 months. My Praized partner, Sylvain, is already talking about organizing a OpenID DevCamp in Montreal. Anyone else interested?
Posted in Clickpass, Conferences, OpenID, SXSW, Yahoo! | 4 Comments »