The business of social media is morphing, which is no surprise.  What is interesting to note is the growing importance of what I’d label “filtration and curation” (not just because of the Jesse Jackson ring it brings to the title!).

In the “early days” of social media, we focused on aggregation - picking up the crumbs of commentary wherever it can be found and blending it to amass some scale of commentary.  As the world gets more and more conversant, aggregation hatches a new problem, in its quest to solve an old one. Every day, the problem of scale is being solved naturally, via the sheer volume of user participation. Context and interaction form the mantra, replacing more.

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web 2.0, social, local social, local guides, strategy, OpenSocial | 1 Comment »

go here first!

A local guide for you Interactive Local Media scenesters…

Enjoy!

social, local guides | No Comments »

I’m guessing a bunch of you are heading to Seattle for the upcoming Kelsey Conference, Drilling Down on Local ‘08. If you’re undecided, take this as a strong recommendation - this will be one of the top events of 2008 for local search industry vets and newbies alike.

Unfortunately, I have to be in Europe. However, I thought you’d enjoy seeing a handy Guide that was created by a Seattle native, to give you an orientation beyond the hotel walls. It’s kind of a cool way to preview our local social beta site, Guidespot.com.

Click on the widget to the left, and you’ll see it.

Hope you enjoy, and feel free to pass it along - even better, make your own!

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Greg Sterling previewed our new 3-week old beta of GuideSpot.com in his blog yesterday, with an appreciated nod “Over time the site could evolve into something very interesting and valuable.” At Local Matters, we certainly would agree. Here’s a little more on the site, and how we see it positioned in the social-vertical-search triangle of local.

Clearly, the growth momentum is there for social participation - consumers are more comfortable with self-expression and interaction every day. Sites that align with this trend generally outperform those that center on search, and create more fundamental pull and engagement. When we looked at this space, we centered our energy on the concept of a consumer’s list at the core of a social engine.

(more…)

social, local shopping, local guides, publishing, OpenSocial | No Comments »

Techfold did an interesting post on the evolution of grocery shopping - it’s good “out there” thinking that touches on how one dimension of social and local shopping might evolve. A brief excerpt below sets the stage, then Rod goes on to extrapolate to a web 2.0 social scenario (which I consider extreme, but it is thought-provoking): (more…)

web 2.0, local social, local guides | 3 Comments »

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.

Here’s an overview… (more…)

web 2.0, local social, local shopping, local guides, YP | 16 Comments »

At Local Matters, we’ve been working through ideation, consumer research, prototyping, and product planning for about 18 months in the area that has come to be referred to as “local social”. LocalGuides.com represents the cumulative effect of these activities, and the point of entry into a new stream of development and growth for our company.

The industry has witnessed a lot of interesting experimentation and success with user-generated content, building on the unstoppable live web experience. The increasingly engaged consumer has begun to shift their view of the Internet to a place where sharing and interaction become integral and common, and more and more expected every day. (more…)

web 2.0, local social, local shopping, local guides | No Comments »

Local Matters works in close partnership with traditional local media publishers, providing advanced technology to improve their online and mobile publishing products, and we provide a growing base of distribution through a suite of online media properties. (more…)

local guides, publishing, YP, strategy | No Comments »

The rumor circling around the blogsphere – that StumbleUpon was being acquired by eBay - really caught my eye. I’ve been extolling the virtues of SU for a few months, and telling people to try it. For those who haven’t, Wikipedia explains:

StumbleUpon is a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are typically presented when the user clicks the Stumble button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new webpage to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. i.e. it is a recommendation system which uses peer and social networking principles. There is also one-click blogging built in as well. Users can rate, or choose not to rate, any webpage with a thumbs-up or thumbs down, and clicking the Stumble button resembles “channel-surfing. the web.”

Exploring SU was a bit of an epiphany for me. (more…)

social, local social, local guides, YP | No Comments »

Blogging from a (hard to find) quiet corner of the enormous web 2.0 expo show…

It’s a pretty staggering show, in terms of sheer mass - chatting with the O’Reilly team last night, I was told there are more than 10,000 registered users, and the main events gather more than 3,000 in a room. It’s a pretty impressive business success, especially if you were there during the humble beginnings of Tim’s 2.0 shows a couple of years ago.

Part of me still cringes at the feverish feel. Kind of funny, yet telling - in Tim’s opening remarks, he prompted the audience with a “do you think this is a bubble” leading question (apparently expecting a resounding “hell, no! Web 2.0″ frenzied chant), but got kind of an embarrassed mumble. Hmmm…

I spoke on a panel with Yahoo, Intuit, Local.com yesterday (more…)

web 2.0, search, social, local social, local shopping, local guides | No Comments »