It's All Hyper-Glocal to Me.
If I was to summarise the business opportunity I have invested the last 2 years on (and worked on most of my career) it's Local. Whether it's shopping, family, friends, dating and a large percentage of the GDP which people create and consume in their live, Local is implicit. And media will always have demand for local, and the demand is accelerating so that city or suburb level isnt enough : People are demanding the exact location. And wanting online services built out from that geo-starting point : As one viewing point for the content.
There is a parallel trend of the internet having enabled and catalysed global 2 way connections between people, and facilitated boarderless communication and commerce markets, but once that online persona is shutdown for the night, people are still figuring out where to order dinner from, and watch their local TV station and read their local paper.
Where it gets interesting is what people consume when disaggregated is both global and local. Glocal as Dana says. So an Australian news service will lead with a local murder or event, and then syndicate globally relevant content, especially in categories where there is obvious leadership such as technology (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) or entertainment (Hollywood, CSI) Media has always been a mashup, but now the user has the tools to recreate the mix and priority to their suit their own concerns, local being one driver.
Global content that is consumed locally still has different characteristics : TV shows do not run at the same time; Movies are released at different times globally and even examples like cars have differences such as what side the steering wheel is on. Not to mention price and actually fulfilling the transaction. (Australia wont get $15 feature films on Itunes for years, guaranteed)
Local online services such as Citysearch also got a semi-bad name by not having huge home run billion dollar exits or sustainable leadership. So geeks and investors are tentative on local; Often you need to be able to aggregate enough eyeballs at a suburb and business category level to then sell to an advertiser, which done with a real ad sales rep can cost more than the advertiser insertion order they occasionally come back with. The difference this time with bigger audience and broadband is self service performance driven advertising technology, with contextual targeting, sold to small to medium sized businesses that are increasingly embracing online advertising. If anything the technology and case studies driving local targeting of advertising is holding back the growth rather than the advertisers not wanting to spend. (ie search demand is only 10-15% satisfied : "I want to buy more clicks!")
By definition, the core technology platform of online services - whether they be blogs, photos, videos, IM and search - do not necessarily have a local or social element. So you dont necessarily localise the actual application. Functionality merely allows you to upload a photo, post a page, watch a video. It's the content and community around the application that is local. Use China as an example - The market potential for local applications in China is much larger than California, New York or Australia - but the level of competition and PHd smarts working on the local solutions there is far less than the bubble cities.
The context around this functionality is increasingly social, and indeed affected by local concerns : What your friends and family watch, link to, and say matters more in many cases than what your online blogging buddy says. Especially once you get outside the echo chamber. And if you are looking for a job, buying a car or house - 3 of the biggest decisions out there along with who to spend your life with ;) the virtual community aint a huge amount of help, other than to help you pick up the pieces in a sad chatroom or comments section of a blog post. (cue melodramatic dripping with humour soundbite)
Sometimes you will need to rebuild the application to achieve your local goals because of all the noise and data associated with it. (not to mention the commercial licensing issues around it) The beauty of open source and commercial API's means the amount you need to build is 9-10 times less than last time : Where people used to build content management systems, ad servers, the applications themselves, rather than the most important proprietary one. This is the main reason Web 2.0 is much cheaper than Dot Com 1.0.
If marketing has the customer at the centre, and markets are moving to a customer of one, or mass customisation, then many Web 2.0 applications need to be implemented for non Mountain View and Manhattan markets around the local. The posterchild for this whole movement Google has realised (at least on a country level) the importance of localising it's services into as many markets as it can. Ditto Ebay. Just as there was Citysearch and Sidewalk in 1.0 days, 2.0 has spurned the Yelps, Judybooks and fascinating Plazes.
The recent Hitwise search that MySpace audience actually buy a hell of alot will also ultimately be broken down by geo-segmentation as well. Facebook members also have an obvious geo-component where the university they attend for 3-5 years is in a certain location. It is only a matter of time till these services plug in not just a karaoke or avatar service, but self service performance marketing programs which local merchants can utilise to tap into the tens of millions of local prospects that use these services.
This is why Flickr's Geo-Tagging and associated API is probably the most interesting product I've seen developed by GEMAYA for 2006; From the perspective of someone whose business and interest in the Local component of 2.0. The Global Village is great, but the Glocal one is even better.
Dave Winer linked to this great post by Jeffrey Veen on Flickr's Geotagging - so now when I search Flickr for "Shoreham" (on Mornington Peninsula Victoria, Australia - I dont get Shoreham in the UK) : "They could have waited for camera manufacturers to add GPS chips or asked cameraphone users to thumb in their location. They chose, however, to exploit the fact that metadata can be added asynchronously without much penalty. Finally, by including a very easy to use API, Flickr ensures success by giving up control. Send in a properly formatted URL and get back a list of photos - so easy even I could get it to work. I can get at my data whenever I want, do with it what I please, and inspire mashups nobody's even yet considered."
There is a parallel trend of the internet having enabled and catalysed global 2 way connections between people, and facilitated boarderless communication and commerce markets, but once that online persona is shutdown for the night, people are still figuring out where to order dinner from, and watch their local TV station and read their local paper.
Where it gets interesting is what people consume when disaggregated is both global and local. Glocal as Dana says. So an Australian news service will lead with a local murder or event, and then syndicate globally relevant content, especially in categories where there is obvious leadership such as technology (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) or entertainment (Hollywood, CSI) Media has always been a mashup, but now the user has the tools to recreate the mix and priority to their suit their own concerns, local being one driver.
Global content that is consumed locally still has different characteristics : TV shows do not run at the same time; Movies are released at different times globally and even examples like cars have differences such as what side the steering wheel is on. Not to mention price and actually fulfilling the transaction. (Australia wont get $15 feature films on Itunes for years, guaranteed)
Local online services such as Citysearch also got a semi-bad name by not having huge home run billion dollar exits or sustainable leadership. So geeks and investors are tentative on local; Often you need to be able to aggregate enough eyeballs at a suburb and business category level to then sell to an advertiser, which done with a real ad sales rep can cost more than the advertiser insertion order they occasionally come back with. The difference this time with bigger audience and broadband is self service performance driven advertising technology, with contextual targeting, sold to small to medium sized businesses that are increasingly embracing online advertising. If anything the technology and case studies driving local targeting of advertising is holding back the growth rather than the advertisers not wanting to spend. (ie search demand is only 10-15% satisfied : "I want to buy more clicks!")
By definition, the core technology platform of online services - whether they be blogs, photos, videos, IM and search - do not necessarily have a local or social element. So you dont necessarily localise the actual application. Functionality merely allows you to upload a photo, post a page, watch a video. It's the content and community around the application that is local. Use China as an example - The market potential for local applications in China is much larger than California, New York or Australia - but the level of competition and PHd smarts working on the local solutions there is far less than the bubble cities.
The context around this functionality is increasingly social, and indeed affected by local concerns : What your friends and family watch, link to, and say matters more in many cases than what your online blogging buddy says. Especially once you get outside the echo chamber. And if you are looking for a job, buying a car or house - 3 of the biggest decisions out there along with who to spend your life with ;) the virtual community aint a huge amount of help, other than to help you pick up the pieces in a sad chatroom or comments section of a blog post. (cue melodramatic dripping with humour soundbite)
Sometimes you will need to rebuild the application to achieve your local goals because of all the noise and data associated with it. (not to mention the commercial licensing issues around it) The beauty of open source and commercial API's means the amount you need to build is 9-10 times less than last time : Where people used to build content management systems, ad servers, the applications themselves, rather than the most important proprietary one. This is the main reason Web 2.0 is much cheaper than Dot Com 1.0.
If marketing has the customer at the centre, and markets are moving to a customer of one, or mass customisation, then many Web 2.0 applications need to be implemented for non Mountain View and Manhattan markets around the local. The posterchild for this whole movement Google has realised (at least on a country level) the importance of localising it's services into as many markets as it can. Ditto Ebay. Just as there was Citysearch and Sidewalk in 1.0 days, 2.0 has spurned the Yelps, Judybooks and fascinating Plazes.
The recent Hitwise search that MySpace audience actually buy a hell of alot will also ultimately be broken down by geo-segmentation as well. Facebook members also have an obvious geo-component where the university they attend for 3-5 years is in a certain location. It is only a matter of time till these services plug in not just a karaoke or avatar service, but self service performance marketing programs which local merchants can utilise to tap into the tens of millions of local prospects that use these services.
This is why Flickr's Geo-Tagging and associated API is probably the most interesting product I've seen developed by GEMAYA for 2006; From the perspective of someone whose business and interest in the Local component of 2.0. The Global Village is great, but the Glocal one is even better.
Dave Winer linked to this great post by Jeffrey Veen on Flickr's Geotagging - so now when I search Flickr for "Shoreham" (on Mornington Peninsula Victoria, Australia - I dont get Shoreham in the UK) : "They could have waited for camera manufacturers to add GPS chips or asked cameraphone users to thumb in their location. They chose, however, to exploit the fact that metadata can be added asynchronously without much penalty. Finally, by including a very easy to use API, Flickr ensures success by giving up control. Send in a properly formatted URL and get back a list of photos - so easy even I could get it to work. I can get at my data whenever I want, do with it what I please, and inspire mashups nobody's even yet considered."
posted by redbarren at 11:14 AM
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