The Praized Blog

TechCrunch offers a list of new start-ups operating in the space they call “the holy grail of mobile social networking”: “physical presence detection and information exchange with other users.”

Aka-Aki (Germany): “create a profile and download the java app to your phone. You can also create and join groups that say things about your life, job, etc. When you are near other people who are members, data about you is transmitted to them via bluetooth, and vice versa. Users have control over data flow with privacy settings.”

Imity (Denmark): “it detects other members via bluetooth and send basic profile information to your phone. It also keeps track of people on its website, so you can check that out periodically from your normal computer. It’s bridges mobile and traditional social networks, which may help it gain critical mass.”

MeetMoi (USA): “it uses text messaging to help connect people. It’s dating focused - text your location to the service and it notifies other users in your area that you are there. If they are interested, they can contact you.”

MobiLuck (France): it “is another bluetooth solution similar to Aka-Aki and Imity. Download the software to your phone and it vibrates when other users are nearby. You can then chat with them, send photos, etc.”

BrightKite (USA): “serves location based notifications (”place streaming”) over email, instant messaging of text messages. The idea is to stream content about a place, from a place. Friends are alerted when you are nearby. You receive offers from local businesses. Etc. Targeted towards conferences, bars, parties and public places. It is also a platform for third party applications.”

What it means: Talking about critical success factors, TechCrunch mentions that “what’s harder is just plain getting a critical mass of users.” I would answer that’s only one side of the equation. The other one is monetization and I believe local advertising plays a key role there. If you operate a local play, you should be thinking hard about your mobile strategy today. My gut feeling is that we’re 18-24 months from real breakthroughs in local mobile advertising but, when that happens, it might become a very important source of revenues. How big? The Kelsey Group just released a report on US mobile search advertising revenues and they forecast that it will reach $1.4B in 2012.

Just found this. Pages Jaunes, France’s official directory publisher, just launched 3D versions of Paris and Rennes. You can see top tourist attractions in beautiful 3D glory and you can search for businesses as well. Their web site mentions that it was done in partnership with Archividéo, the City of Rennes, the Institut Géographique National and InterAtlas.

What it means: beautiful execution. I am a strong believer that we will eventually navigate and find businesses through 3D interfaces. I think Pages Jaunes Groupe in France has taken yet another important step to continue locking up France’s online market via great innovations.

Via Mathew Ingram’s blog:

Topix, the local news aggregator that is owned by several big U.S. newspaper chains (Gannett, The Tribune and McClatchy), is doing what amounts to a relaunch of the site and adding “citizen journalism” or social media to the mix, as well as moving to a dot-com domain (it used to be dot-net). Founder and CEO Rich Skrenta — who describes on his personal blog how this came out of an attempt to “de-suckify” the site — has a blog post at Topix about the changes, and says: “We’re now inviting members from our hyperlocal communities to take over the controls and help us edit the news.” (…)

Skrenta says that Topix is getting about 37,000 posts a day, and the site was looking for a way of featuring the top 1 to 5 per cent of those contributions that actually add something to the story. Now, anyone can submit a story, or facts about a story, or an opinion, or cellphone photos, and they will be handled by what amounts to an editor. (…)

At the same time, my friend Philippe Martin sends me this news about TF1 (one of the top TV networks in France). On their 1pm newscast, they will ask viewers to send them local videos using the Wat.tv site (also owned by TF1), which might afterward appear on TV.

What it means: newspapers and TV news organizations are starting to clue in on the importance of hyperlocal news and citizen journalism. It is a key success factor for them in the future.