We’ve just launched the beta version of a brand spanking new site – localguides.com.
We think the site (and the technology and methodologies behind it) begin to lay the foundation to tackle two vexing problems in local search – how to place consumer participation into the center of the experience and, how to connect search and commentary into useful real-life planning and sharing tools.
the list
The concept of local lists is central to this product. Consumers truly live on lists - lists organize Sunday errands, lists organize family and friends activities, lists bring structure to complex situations. Lists ease tension by giving consumers a sense of order and control! The very cool thing is that lists also make great conversation starters.
I hate chain hotels, and spend a lot of time traveling to NYC - so my commentary on NY boutique hotels has some value, and could be a useful building block for friends and visitors traveling there. Yet, I know nothing about small theaters in the Denver area; This guide can really help me plan a night out like a local expert. I also love Sushi, but never thought I could make it at home - here’s something pretty interesting, with a real local dimension. And so it goes…
lists + web 2.0 = guides
All this web 2.0 stuff can bring incredible context, commentary and engagement to a list. When we blended the two together, calling it a list just felt so flat. Enter “local guides”. We chose to stake out a new label for this concept to represent this lists-on-steroids concept!
get your guide on
Start by having some fun with this. We think we have made it engaging to turn your list into a richly annotated guide that you’ll be excited to share. A very web 2.0 style mash-up tool sits at the center, supported by lots of local content aggregation with simple tools for finding, copying and sharing guides. You can search and select the businesses and places that make up your personal list - and then “pimp up your guide” with comments, maps, Flickr photos, web links, YouTube videos and move them all around into a layout that makes your statement.
A consumer that creates a guide can push it back out to other users to view, and to copy into their own guide. Of course, your guide can be just for you, or for you and a friend – it’s your tool, you set the sharing and copying rights every time you create a guide. We provide the destination where you can explore, browse and connect with other guides and “authors” based on your location and interests.
may we guide you?
We’ve learned that with social participation models, there are lists that will just get left out of the picture. There are lot of complex shopping and planning situations that a consumer faces that seem daunting - people don’t just naturally sit around thinking how their list on “planning for a new teen driver” could benefit another consumer just arriving at that stage of life. So that’s where we come in and try to help. We aim to “get the conversation started” in useful ways by adding “Starter Guides” that help you organize and simplify many complex activities. They are there for you to copy and make your own. We hope that providing handy examples will help consumers work through many new local shopping activities. In turn, we hope you then share your experiences, building the collective intelligence of the neighborhood.
dare we call something “1.0 “?
So, the LocalGuides beta site just launched – it’s unabashedly a 1.0 version. The press release is here. The Site is here.
Give it a whirl, and let us know what you think – good and bad, intuitive and frustrating. It’s very much a work in progress – we’d be fools to think we’ve nailed such a “big idea” in beta. However, we do hope you see the seeds of something fundamentally important and integral to the way local search progresses. Come back often, we’ll be enhancing the site quite a bit over the Summer.
[…] Local Guides: local social verticals Perry blogged about the public beta of localguides.com, in the wee hours of this (Dutch) morning. This continues Local Matter’s exploration into ‘local vertical’ through an ongoing dialogue with the user and enabling users to have better dialogues with other users. Using that special blend of search ontology and local features that makes LMi what it is, localguides.com builds on this as well by introducing something to chat with: special lists, called guides. As Perry says: “The concept of local lists is central to this product. Consumers truly live on lists - lists organize Sunday errands, lists organize family and friends activities, lists bring structure to complex situations. Lists ease tension by giving consumers a sense of order and control! The very cool thing is that lists also make great conversation starters”. Lists with participation and collaboration are called guides. Guides have two roles: they are the things that enable users to collate, sort, comment and share their local knowledge. They are also the integration of advertiser-generated content and user-generated content. They are wonderfully viral containers for passing on a symbiotic mix of advertiser and user. […]
Left by Local Guides: local social verticals « Professional Management on May 16th, 2007