Nokia announced it acquired MetaCarta. I've mentioned MetaCarta here before. They specialize in location-aware services and provide a geo-tagging engine and other products/services. Nokia is most obviously interested in leveraging MetaCarta's tools for Nokia phones.
The press release states "MetaCarta’s technology will be used in the area of local search in Location and other services." A not so insightful or revealing comment.
This acquisition comes after Nokia acquired Novarra -- a mobile browser and platform.
Here's more coverage:
The folks over at Directions Magazine offer some good commentary. I agree with them that a major publisher probably missed the boat in not acquiring MetaCarta. This is exactly the technology you need to help automate a hyper-local strategy which will be even more important as location-aware mobile devices proliferate.
Showing posts with label hyper-local. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hyper-local. Show all posts
KOMO Adds Hyper-Local Prompt, Topics Pages on Home
KomoNews.com rolled out some changes to their home page layout recently. One of the changes may signal some discomfort on their part with regard to traffic going to the hyper-local pages.
When I first visited the site this week I was prompted with an overlay that suggested I check out the local communities section. Obviously, they are looking to drive traffic into those hyperlocal community pages. The div is apparently frequency capped, so I only got it once. Could this suggest a little angst on their part with regard to traffic to those pages?
Also, they have added topics pages adjacent to content buckets/modules on the home page. This is typically a d strategy to drive users to longer-tail content and drive SEO. DataSphere powers topics pages and is most assuredly powering the new topics feature.
When I first visited the site this week I was prompted with an overlay that suggested I check out the local communities section. Obviously, they are looking to drive traffic into those hyperlocal community pages. The div is apparently frequency capped, so I only got it once. Could this suggest a little angst on their part with regard to traffic to those pages?
Also, they have added topics pages adjacent to content buckets/modules on the home page. This is typically a d strategy to drive users to longer-tail content and drive SEO. DataSphere powers topics pages and is most assuredly powering the new topics feature.
Report: Media in Free Fall; Niche Not Picking up Slack
The State of the News Media 2010 shows a pretty dismal story for the health and status of local media. Rather than repeat it all, check out Greg Sterling's post which highlights some key charts that show the decline, primarily in newspapers. There is also a pretty shocking chart showing the impact of the recession and disruption combined on traditional media revenue in 2009.
“Audiences continue to fall for newscasts across all time slots. Revenue, too, was in a free fall. Looking ahead, most market analysts project revenues to grow only slightly, but that is hardly taken as good news given that it is a year that will include both the off-year elections and winter Olympic Games,” the Pew report said.
Compounding the problem, Pew found that media doesn't know how to monetize their content -- "It remains as unclear in 2010 as ever how to monetize the growing audience."
The results fuel a fire led by folks like Jeff Jarvis, Michael Rosenblum, and more recently Marc Andreesen that recommend media "burn the place to the ground" and start over.
The results fuel a fire led by folks like Jeff Jarvis, Michael Rosenblum, and more recently Marc Andreesen that recommend media "burn the place to the ground" and start over.
It's a dense report (summary) and with so many people doing summaries I focused on the Citizen Journalism part of the report. The findings in that part of the report are certain to anger hyper-local and citizen journalism advocates. The reports finds that both HL and CJ are wanting in terms of quantity of content, resources and overall ability to compete with traditional media. The conclusion appears to be that CJ and HL are not in a position to fill the shoes of traditional media.
The framing of the evaluation and results seem odd at times and suggest a bias against the emerging ecosystem. The report looked at with 363 journalism Web sites across 46 randomly sampled markets. The result: "The citizen news sites offered less news, fewer updates and were less open to interaction with readers than traditional news websites."
One criticism that the report focused on was a lack of transparency in mission. For instance the report found "citizenwausau.com did not have easy-to-find mission statement or contact information." While I understand and respect how journalists evaluate the journalistic integrity of these sites, I believe they overlook the fact that the audience may not care that blogs, HL sites and CJ sites are missing mission statements.
The report throws out a half-hearted comment of hope at the end of the section.
"Despite the gaps between legacy news coverage and citizen news, highly promising citizen and alternative sites are emerging daily."
Despite this hopeful comment, the report seems to conclude 'traditional media is in sharp decline and don't expect citizen journalism to pick up where traditional media is falling.'
The report falls short of suggesting where one might seek out the future of journalism. A quote from Jane Stevens, the director of media strategies for the Kansas-based World Company may allude to what the authors think:
"You have to integrate community conversation with ‘traditional’ journalism.... That means providing the same tools to the community, including businesses, as journalists have, and focusing content on how to solve problems and improve the community."
DataSphere Must Change or Risk Failure
Datasphere has been getting a lot of press for their hyper-local solution for media. So, I looked into it further. Their solution is a combination of sales and technology offered at no cost to local affiliates. As they explain it, they want to help local media establish a hyper-local footprint that they can build on over time. At the face of it, the solution presents an inviting opportunity to media. There is little risk to stations and good potential for upside because the cost for the platform is covered in a rev-share and DataSphere is bringing new SMB clients/revenue to the table that the stations are not willing or able to pursue.
With all of this said, I believe there are some serious flaws in their approach that will burn them later on.
- They are not actively using LAT/LON in their content. Everything is based on topics. Topics allows for efficient work-flow, SEO, and the ability to do natural language search. However, very soon they will need to build LAT/LON into everything. Without geo-tagging, the experience can't get micro-local and so monetization strategies are limited significantly especially in the mobile world. Without geo-tagging advertising can't be delivered based on very granular location information, such as where the consumer is located when doing the search/consumption and where that is in relation to an advertiser that may want to reach them at that moment.
- They are not doing any real aggregation.Without aggregation it is difficult to scale hyper-local. This where Outside.in has the advantage. Essentially, the local media cannot produce enough content, even with hired guns, to fill all the hyper-local slots with robust content. Aggregation is required to fill in the holes.
- The quality of content will suffer if editors are spread too thin. Editors covering too many communities won't be embedded in the community and so they will miss the gestalt of life in those communities.The user experience will suffer and so will traffic.
WHERE Claims Ads Lift CTR 3X
According to Fierce Wireless , uLocate launched Where Ads a service to offer hyper-local mobile ads. Of note, uLocate claims, "the click through rates on WHERE Ads exceeded other mobile ads by as much as three times.
This reinforces the findings of eMarkerter and others -- location adds relevancy and with relevancy
consumers are more apt to click.
Coverage also at Gigaom.com, Internet2go, etc.
consumers are more apt to click.
Coverage also at Gigaom.com, Internet2go, etc.
Outside.in and Datasphere on Collision Course
Outside.in and Datasphere are on a collision course. Outside.in just announced a new business model for partners where they actually sell the ads on the hyperlocal pages they provide to publisher sites. This was the last piece that needed to fall in place for Outside.in to provide a complete end-to-end hyper-local solution. DataSphere has rev-share model and they sell the ad inventory. Outside.in has free or license models and now they'll sell your inventory as well.
Of course, the two companies are different in their their approaches. DataSphere provides a platform for media to build local (semi-hyper-local) sites, while Outside.in is primarily an aggregator. However, there are ways in both solutions to do what the other offers.
In both cases, the hyper-local solution required the vendor to provide monetization services because local media doesn't know how to get it done on their own.
"We are starting to realize that a lot of publishers are struggling to generate healthy online revenues on their hyperlocal and local pages. So what we will do is power the entire local pages for the publisher, all within their brands.," head of business development Camilla Cho told Citizen Publishing.
Folks at DataSphere told me the same thing. They said KOMO had 70% remnant before they brought their solution to Seattle.
Of course, the two companies are different in their their approaches. DataSphere provides a platform for media to build local (semi-hyper-local) sites, while Outside.in is primarily an aggregator. However, there are ways in both solutions to do what the other offers.
In both cases, the hyper-local solution required the vendor to provide monetization services because local media doesn't know how to get it done on their own.
"We are starting to realize that a lot of publishers are struggling to generate healthy online revenues on their hyperlocal and local pages. So what we will do is power the entire local pages for the publisher, all within their brands.," head of business development Camilla Cho told Citizen Publishing.
Folks at DataSphere told me the same thing. They said KOMO had 70% remnant before they brought their solution to Seattle.
Outside.in Not Threatened by Patch
"Mark Josephson, CEO of hyper-local news aggregator Outside.in, doesn’t seem all that concerned about AOL’s plans to pour $50 million into its own hyper-local news operation, Patch.com," or so he told gigaom.com in an interview.
I have to agree with Mark. They're approaching hyperlocal from two different ends of the spectrum. I would actually argue they need each other. The more robust the hyperlocal ecosystem the better for everyone, especially when it comes time to monetize.
I have to agree with Mark. They're approaching hyperlocal from two different ends of the spectrum. I would actually argue they need each other. The more robust the hyperlocal ecosystem the better for everyone, especially when it comes time to monetize.
Waze Partners with Intermap
Waze.com is a crowd-sourced traffic information provider.They just formed a partnership with Intermap Technologies: "Through ongoing analysis, Intermap can supplement its existing road change detection process, noting when new roads appear or existing roads change. Combining the Waze data with satellite imagery analysis, the Company will enhance its change detection capability and be enabled to pinpoint where additional technologies can be utilized to capture new and altered roads." Crowd-sourced traffic data could present a great opportunity for local media to offer surface street traffic data.
The Copying Begins - Raycom Does DataSphere
DataSphere is on a roll. They announced today that they did a deal with Raycom. For those of you that don't know, TV stations rarely have a truly new idea. They typically admit that fact. They are prone to watch cautiously and copy people (because they don't want to be the one that took the risk and blew it) who have a winning formula. Right now, Fischer Communications has the winning formula in the eyes of many local media looking to experiment in hyperlocal. >> Read the press release
AOL's Patch launches in Manhattan Beach
There's been a lot of buzz about Aol's Patch strategy -- good and bad. Now, AOL launched Patch in Manhattan Beach according to LA Observed
"The Patch approach of hyper-local news hubs debuted today on the West Coast with the unveiling of a site devoted to Manhattan Beach. Another is planned soon for Hermosa Beach."
"The Patch approach of hyper-local news hubs debuted today on the West Coast with the unveiling of a site devoted to Manhattan Beach. Another is planned soon for Hermosa Beach."
Placecast's ShopAlerts to Deliver on Mobile Promise
Greg Sterling posted an interesting announcement from Placecast. If you haven't heard of Placecast and you are interested in monetizing LBS or hyperlocal initiatives you should get to know what they do.I met them a year ago at Where 2.0 and discovered they could close the gap between my geovision and implementation.
Placecast's ShopAlerts allows retailers to create automated SMS alerts that are sent to consumers when they are near a retail outlet with which they have opted-in. Then as the consumer goes about their daily life they are automatically alerted when they are near a retail location of any specials. A key to ShopAlerts is that it does not require a smartphone. Someday this will not be a competitive advantage but for now it is because most people don't use smartphones. According to Screenwerk, four retailers are on board at launch: SONIC, American Eagle Outfitters, and REI.
This is the second announcement this week where a company is delivering on the early promise of mobile and LBS. Loopt made an announcement for a pay per action solution coming soon.
Update 2/27: It looks like North Face is also experimenting with Placecasts approach. According to Media Buyer Planner North Face has a campaign where Placecast "created 1,000 fenced areas in and around the cities where the North Face has many stores. The North Face also chose locations where there is a lot of snow and rain, so it could tailor its messages to the weather."
Placecast's ShopAlerts allows retailers to create automated SMS alerts that are sent to consumers when they are near a retail outlet with which they have opted-in. Then as the consumer goes about their daily life they are automatically alerted when they are near a retail location of any specials. A key to ShopAlerts is that it does not require a smartphone. Someday this will not be a competitive advantage but for now it is because most people don't use smartphones. According to Screenwerk, four retailers are on board at launch: SONIC, American Eagle Outfitters, and REI.
This is the second announcement this week where a company is delivering on the early promise of mobile and LBS. Loopt made an announcement for a pay per action solution coming soon.
Update 2/27: It looks like North Face is also experimenting with Placecasts approach. According to Media Buyer Planner North Face has a campaign where Placecast "created 1,000 fenced areas in and around the cities where the North Face has many stores. The North Face also chose locations where there is a lot of snow and rain, so it could tailor its messages to the weather."
Loopt Seeks Advertising 'Holy Grail'
Awash in all the announcements at the Mobile World Congress was the announcement by Loopt that they would offer a new performance-based hyper-local advertising solution.
Mobile Marketing Watch writes, "Loopt could essentially allow a company to keep track of ads shown and whether people actually visited a location later using GPS or voluntary location-sharing," such as check-ins. This, "allows for a cost-per-action pricing model in lieu of more traditional and out-dated cost-per-impression or CPC models."
Many call this the 'Holy Grail' of performance marketing or advertising because it offers real accountability. The advertiser pays for actual visits to their store, not impressions, or clicks. The opportunity is obviously unique to mobile devices and points to why so many people are deeply interested in hyperlocal and location based services as of late.
"The company’s CEO said there would a self-serve way of buying these ads. Much farther down the line, one could imagine a bidding model where businesses set the value of a potential store visit from a new customer, for example, akin to Google’s advertising bidding system for clicks," wrote Mobile Marketing Watch.
Mobile Marketing Watch writes, "Loopt could essentially allow a company to keep track of ads shown and whether people actually visited a location later using GPS or voluntary location-sharing," such as check-ins. This, "allows for a cost-per-action pricing model in lieu of more traditional and out-dated cost-per-impression or CPC models."
Many call this the 'Holy Grail' of performance marketing or advertising because it offers real accountability. The advertiser pays for actual visits to their store, not impressions, or clicks. The opportunity is obviously unique to mobile devices and points to why so many people are deeply interested in hyperlocal and location based services as of late.
"The company’s CEO said there would a self-serve way of buying these ads. Much farther down the line, one could imagine a bidding model where businesses set the value of a potential store visit from a new customer, for example, akin to Google’s advertising bidding system for clicks," wrote Mobile Marketing Watch.
MediaWeek Scratches Hyperlocal Surface
MediaWeek did an underwhelming job explaining why hyperlocal is hot right now, and the percieved value and pitfalls of hyperlocal. It suggests there may be opportunity for media if the hyperlocal ad/sales code can be cracked.The article rightly states that the current big winners in the space are Yodel, ReachLocal and Local.com.
"These companies, which have exhibited the largest ad growth in the space, do the dirty digital work that many small businesses aren’t equipped to do like creating banners and videos, and navigating search marketing," the article said.
It fails to mention local media success stories, such as Fischer Broadcasting's work in Seattle, and McClatchy Newspapers' efforts which were recently featured at the Borrell Conference. While those companies have NOT seen an explosion of ad revenue from hyperlocal they have had success with hyperlocal business models.
Lastly, there are some interesting quotes from players in the space, such as the CEO of Topix.net. I would love to hear or read the full interviews. They would most certainly prove more insightful than the article itself.
"These companies, which have exhibited the largest ad growth in the space, do the dirty digital work that many small businesses aren’t equipped to do like creating banners and videos, and navigating search marketing," the article said.
It fails to mention local media success stories, such as Fischer Broadcasting's work in Seattle, and McClatchy Newspapers' efforts which were recently featured at the Borrell Conference. While those companies have NOT seen an explosion of ad revenue from hyperlocal they have had success with hyperlocal business models.
Lastly, there are some interesting quotes from players in the space, such as the CEO of Topix.net. I would love to hear or read the full interviews. They would most certainly prove more insightful than the article itself.
Newspapers Try Outside.in for Hyperlocal
Outside.in announced that McClatchy, Dow Jones, Lee Enterprises & Tribune are partnering with Outside.in for hyperlocal tools -- http://bit.ly/akSpU. NBC already has Outside.in on its sites. Does this commoditize Outside.in's offering? I think yes, unless each property uses them differently and potentially augments the data or interfaces adding unique value.
Google Ads SMB Enhancements to Maps
Greg Sterling points out Google is introducing a new local business ad (”enhanced listings“) on maps. It is only available in San Jose and Houston. It costs $25 per month to get the following enhancements on your listing:
He add some some screens as well.
- photos
- videos
- Web site
- coupons
- directions
- menu
- reservations
He add some some screens as well.
Borrell 2010: Q&A Reveals Most Interesting Details
I made it to the Borrell Conference in NY this week. The opening panel was very good. Jeff Jarvis opened with his Hyper Local business model followed by a panel with ...
Keynote - Jeff Jarvis, Director, Interactive Journalism Program, City University of New York
Panel - Chris Hendricks, Vice President of Interactive Media, The McClatchy Company
Panel - Chris Jennewein, President, U.S. Local News Network
Panel - Troy McGuire, VP of News and General Manager, Fischer Interactive
Panel - Mark Potts, CEO and Co-Founder, GrowthSpur.com
A lot of the information was a repeat from blog posts and tweets about each initiative but the Q&A section revealed some interesting insights.Here are some notes I captured. I was most interested in the discussion around sales and what strategies are successful in supporting the HL strategies --
Fischer Interactive
Launched or partnered with 109 hyper local Web sites. Generated 400k uniques in seattle a month. They have 1,000 paying advertisers, most of which have never advertised on TV. Fischer claims their HL initiative is profitable. The use a company called DataSphere to power the hyper local sites (widely published partnership) and they have a tele-sales team (40 people) that sells the smaller packages to smaller SMBs. The use of a tele-sales team for going after SMBs was something I pitched to Gannett 5 years ago and was shot down. Fischer claims its very cost efficient and successful because it allows the traditional sales team to focus on the blue chip companies that capture higher revenue per package. One side note that I found interesting and should present a possible gold mine of story ideas for any newsroom -- Fischer claims that they find a lot of story ideas come from user comments.
USLNN
Building a network of HL sites. Started in San Diego and adding Orange County -- SDNN.com. The focus on blue chip advertisers in the local market. CPM is about $10. They focus on under-served suburbs. They really try to incentivize their AEs in the following way -- Relatively low base with 15% commision, 20% if you make quota, 25% if you go 15% over quota. Again, this approach is something I pitched to previous employers as a way to get young, inexpensive and aggressive sales people to sell Web-only. I believe the traditional media companies militate against this because (1) it means complicating something they have done the same way for many years increasing the work they must do for hiring and oversight, (2) it could create conflict with other AEs in the organization with different compensation structures, (3) ego. USLNN noted that a segment of advertisers want to have blogs on the core site (A kind of advertorial content) in order to deepen the relationship with their existing customers.
McClatchy Papers
Their hyper local strategy is pro-am strategy, a mix of both professionals and amateurs. Twelve sites are digging into it, including Charlotte and Miami and Raleigh. Raleigh is a success story. McClatchy is against outsourcing sales like Fischer did. Hendricks argued that it somehow undermined the brand having these other people sell. I've actually heard that before. McGuire vehemently disagreed. He said most of the advertisers don't care who is selling, they care about leads and results.Hendricks noted that not all bloggers update as often as a publisher might like. He suggested that they needed to be incented to help them get past the grind of repeated regular publishing which can tire them. They plan to pay blog partners and or share revenue, but they don't yet.
Keynote - Jeff Jarvis, Director, Interactive Journalism Program, City University of New York
Panel - Chris Hendricks, Vice President of Interactive Media, The McClatchy Company
Panel - Chris Jennewein, President, U.S. Local News Network
Panel - Troy McGuire, VP of News and General Manager, Fischer Interactive
Panel - Mark Potts, CEO and Co-Founder, GrowthSpur.com
A lot of the information was a repeat from blog posts and tweets about each initiative but the Q&A section revealed some interesting insights.Here are some notes I captured. I was most interested in the discussion around sales and what strategies are successful in supporting the HL strategies --
Fischer Interactive
Launched or partnered with 109 hyper local Web sites. Generated 400k uniques in seattle a month. They have 1,000 paying advertisers, most of which have never advertised on TV. Fischer claims their HL initiative is profitable. The use a company called DataSphere to power the hyper local sites (widely published partnership) and they have a tele-sales team (40 people) that sells the smaller packages to smaller SMBs. The use of a tele-sales team for going after SMBs was something I pitched to Gannett 5 years ago and was shot down. Fischer claims its very cost efficient and successful because it allows the traditional sales team to focus on the blue chip companies that capture higher revenue per package. One side note that I found interesting and should present a possible gold mine of story ideas for any newsroom -- Fischer claims that they find a lot of story ideas come from user comments.
USLNN
Building a network of HL sites. Started in San Diego and adding Orange County -- SDNN.com. The focus on blue chip advertisers in the local market. CPM is about $10. They focus on under-served suburbs. They really try to incentivize their AEs in the following way -- Relatively low base with 15% commision, 20% if you make quota, 25% if you go 15% over quota. Again, this approach is something I pitched to previous employers as a way to get young, inexpensive and aggressive sales people to sell Web-only. I believe the traditional media companies militate against this because (1) it means complicating something they have done the same way for many years increasing the work they must do for hiring and oversight, (2) it could create conflict with other AEs in the organization with different compensation structures, (3) ego. USLNN noted that a segment of advertisers want to have blogs on the core site (A kind of advertorial content) in order to deepen the relationship with their existing customers.
McClatchy Papers
Their hyper local strategy is pro-am strategy, a mix of both professionals and amateurs. Twelve sites are digging into it, including Charlotte and Miami and Raleigh. Raleigh is a success story. McClatchy is against outsourcing sales like Fischer did. Hendricks argued that it somehow undermined the brand having these other people sell. I've actually heard that before. McGuire vehemently disagreed. He said most of the advertisers don't care who is selling, they care about leads and results.Hendricks noted that not all bloggers update as often as a publisher might like. He suggested that they needed to be incented to help them get past the grind of repeated regular publishing which can tire them. They plan to pay blog partners and or share revenue, but they don't yet.
CNN Experiment Points to Local Opportunity
Traditional media is struggling to figure how to integrate and leverage social media. They want to use Facebook and Twitter because they see how they are growing forces in how people discover, consume and communicate news and information. This past week CNN's experiment with Twitter for the State of the Union Address created a giant road-sign for other media to follow as to one way to use social media and geo-tagging to create relevant content and context.
As far as I know, the Huffington Post was the only media outlet to spot and report on this experiment. CNN partnered with a company called Crimson Hexagon to "analyze almost 150,000 Twitter responses to President Obama's speech." The responses were geo-coded allowing them to provided a sentiment heat map of sorts for the entire United States. Similar to the interactive electoral map CNN used during the general election, John King touched on a state on the interactive map of the U.S. which zoomed the map onto the state and revealed tweet sentiment in that state. An executive with Crimson Hexagon alluded to the future potential in her statements about the product roadmap.
"In major events like the State of the Union, we actually want to get to real-time analysis," she said. "We also want to get, if we can, more granular with location, based on cities and zip codes rather than just states," Melyssa Plunkett-Gomez, an executive with Crimson Hexagon, told the Huff post.
There in lies one of the glaring opportunities for local media. As the algorithms improve for filtering the content and the volume of content grows, there will be an opportunity to repeat the same coverage at a hyper-local level. A TV station could drill down on a county, a zip code or even a city block to offer real-time "sentiment." The technology and know-how is available to do this online and on-air now through companies like Google, Crimson Hexagon, Twitter and Facebook, Outside.in, MetaCarta, WDT Inc., Layar, etc.
Looking beyond CNN's specific use of Twitter, the same technologies could be used to bubble up user generated photos and videos in real-time around a breaking news or developing stories. The value of this should be even more obvious to journalists. Crowdsourcing allows you to go from one or two reporters on the scene sending back reports , to "N" number of eyewitnesses sending you eyewitness reports in real-time. As I mentioned, this can be done now. What appears to be missing is a vision or will to try it.
As far as I know, the Huffington Post was the only media outlet to spot and report on this experiment. CNN partnered with a company called Crimson Hexagon to "analyze almost 150,000 Twitter responses to President Obama's speech." The responses were geo-coded allowing them to provided a sentiment heat map of sorts for the entire United States. Similar to the interactive electoral map CNN used during the general election, John King touched on a state on the interactive map of the U.S. which zoomed the map onto the state and revealed tweet sentiment in that state. An executive with Crimson Hexagon alluded to the future potential in her statements about the product roadmap.
"In major events like the State of the Union, we actually want to get to real-time analysis," she said. "We also want to get, if we can, more granular with location, based on cities and zip codes rather than just states," Melyssa Plunkett-Gomez, an executive with Crimson Hexagon, told the Huff post.
There in lies one of the glaring opportunities for local media. As the algorithms improve for filtering the content and the volume of content grows, there will be an opportunity to repeat the same coverage at a hyper-local level. A TV station could drill down on a county, a zip code or even a city block to offer real-time "sentiment." The technology and know-how is available to do this online and on-air now through companies like Google, Crimson Hexagon, Twitter and Facebook, Outside.in, MetaCarta, WDT Inc., Layar, etc.
Looking beyond CNN's specific use of Twitter, the same technologies could be used to bubble up user generated photos and videos in real-time around a breaking news or developing stories. The value of this should be even more obvious to journalists. Crowdsourcing allows you to go from one or two reporters on the scene sending back reports , to "N" number of eyewitnesses sending you eyewitness reports in real-time. As I mentioned, this can be done now. What appears to be missing is a vision or will to try it.
"Push" Technology Gets It's Due
I've been thinking a lot about push technology lately. It was a buzz term in the late 90's. I was outspoken for years that it would not work. Suddenly, I realized (sorry if I am slow) some very compelling "push" technologies (not called push) are emerging with the proliferation of smart mobile devices.
I was doing my usual reading around hyper local, GeoWeb, etc., when I came across this post on TechCrunch about ambient streams. If you look at the Venn diagram it closely aligns with my own thoughts in this blog.
The author, Edo Segal, says, "The Holy Grail is a filter which only serves up information which is relevant based on who you are, your social graph, what you or your friends are doing now, what you or friends have done before, and in context of other information you are consuming."
That's where the similarities end. Segal goes on to hypothesize that this combination of Realtime Web, Published Information, Geolocation Data, and Social Communications via an intelligent filter will change how we experience reality.
"A very useful metaphor is that humanity is constructing
its own synthetic sixth sense. An ambient sense that perceives the context of your activity and augments your reality with related information and experiences. Increasingly, we will be sensing the world with this sixth sense and that will change the way we collectively experience the world, "Segal wrote.
I'm not one to predict the future. I'm pretty grounded and practical. So, I'll just say that I think he is on to something. This augmented reality is coming, or is here in some forms already. To me, it is essentially a push technology that will change the way we view the world in a very literal sense and possibly in a philosophical sense.
Finally, push is getting its due.
I was doing my usual reading around hyper local, GeoWeb, etc., when I came across this post on TechCrunch about ambient streams. If you look at the Venn diagram it closely aligns with my own thoughts in this blog.
The author, Edo Segal, says, "The Holy Grail is a filter which only serves up information which is relevant based on who you are, your social graph, what you or your friends are doing now, what you or friends have done before, and in context of other information you are consuming."
That's where the similarities end. Segal goes on to hypothesize that this combination of Realtime Web, Published Information, Geolocation Data, and Social Communications via an intelligent filter will change how we experience reality.
"A very useful metaphor is that humanity is constructing
its own synthetic sixth sense. An ambient sense that perceives the context of your activity and augments your reality with related information and experiences. Increasingly, we will be sensing the world with this sixth sense and that will change the way we collectively experience the world, "Segal wrote.I'm not one to predict the future. I'm pretty grounded and practical. So, I'll just say that I think he is on to something. This augmented reality is coming, or is here in some forms already. To me, it is essentially a push technology that will change the way we view the world in a very literal sense and possibly in a philosophical sense.
Finally, push is getting its due.
Yext - Why Doesn't Local Media Think of This?
Here's another example of a monetization solution local media could have thought of and didn't and now should consider experimenting with -- Yext Inc. It a is a point solution that could be part of a sales/service package for an SMB and could also be extended to media's local directories pages for lead generation revenue.
Yext places ads all over the the Internet for local businesses . Yext analyzes calls (via speech-to-text) generated by those ads and only transfers calls to businesses that could result in sales. Yext shares its revenue from advertisers with the publishers. The company plans to use the new funding to help it reach a greater variety of advertisers.
Yext places ads all over the the Internet for local businesses . Yext analyzes calls (via speech-to-text) generated by those ads and only transfers calls to businesses that could result in sales. Yext shares its revenue from advertisers with the publishers. The company plans to use the new funding to help it reach a greater variety of advertisers.
LR Tweeted About Media Companies Going Local in Seattle
Lost Remote reports two Seattle media companies created neighborhood news sites to build hyperlocal communities -- The Hearst-owned SeattlePI.com, launched InQueenAnne.com and KOMO TV, the Fisher-owned ABC affiliate, launched neighborhood sites.
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