1. Activity Streams
2. Identity System & Social Graph
3. Status Updates & Real-Time Conversations
4. User Content
5. Trends & Top Lists
6. Geo-Localisation & Hyperlocal/Neighborhood
7. Questions & Answers
8. Distributed Content, Features & Business Model (API, RSS)
9. E-mail
10. Reward Systems
11. Check-in
12. Sharing and Short-form URLs
13. Community managers

I’m looking forward the ensuing conversation with the attendees to build together an event better portrait of that vision of the future. You can find the presentation on the Locial Social Summit blog.

• “It will reach masses of people”. Reaching masses of people means “mass media” but with a strong local tangent.
• “Status updates will be open across social software. All social software will have status updates”. I make the same claim in the “perfect local media company” presentation I’m doing at the Local Social Summit tomorrow.
• “We will laugh thinking we were updating them all manually. Location will be one of the most widespread status update”. From a local point of view, expect mobile devices to ping Twitter with our permission.
• “Live reviews of any place and product will deeply influence it though”. Ah! Couldn’t agree more. This is the biggest opportunity and threat for traditional local media.
• “Promos by brands and retailers will have big success for last minute deals”. This will be the core monetization model of real-time conversations and search for local media. Newspapers & coupon companies are already well positioned for this kind of product. Directory publishers not so much.
• “Talking to shops and restaurants via Twitter will become standard and will get opt in coupons as we enter a shop, based on location”. This is the natural evolution for small businesses. First they will listen, then they will engage and offer promos.
• “Hyperlocal news sites with Twitter geotagging feature”. Obviously, Twitter will be a powerful broadcast mechanism for local news.
• “Google will have its own Twitter and won’t acquire Twitter”. This means traditional media publishers will have to contend with two (three if you count Facebook) major worldwide competitors (or coopetitors depending how you see the world).

Le Meur is also the organizer of the LeWeb conference happening in Paris in December. I will be attending the conference as an invited blogger.

Here’s how the iPraized iPhone app works:

1) The application will try to determine your physical location using the built-in iPhone geo-location functionality.

2) You can then find places around you based on keyword/category/business name search.

3) Following your search, the application returns relevant local results near you.

4) Users can then select the place they were looking for.

5) and visit the profile page showing the basic information about the place (name, address, phone number, number of people who have “praized” the place, the tags and the map). Users can then “vote up” (to show their appreciation) or “vote down” (if they didn’t have a good experience). You can also leave a comment and share the place with your friends.

6) Users can also find more information about the merchant by visiting our partners YellowPages.ca in Canada and Yellowbook.com in the US.

7) Each user has a profile page showing their activity stream.

This is just one example of what can be done  with our application stack. Source code will be made available soon. We’d like to thank Mirego who worked with us to develop the application.

Download it here!

Highlights:

• 9% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) currently use Twitter to market their businesses.
• 32% of SMBs indicated they plan to include social media in their marketing mix in the next 12 months by using a page on a social site such as Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace.
• 39% of SMBs plan to include customer ratings or reviews on their own Web sites
• 31% plan to include links or ads placed on social sites or blogs.
• The study revealed adoption of social media by SMBs is more prevalent among younger businesses. For example, 16% of SMBs that have been in business for less than 3 years use Twitter to promote themselves

What it means: still think real-time conversation and social media for small merchants is a fad or a dream? Think again. We’re only seeing the point of the iceberg. SMB adoption is now on the radar screen and will grow tremendously in the next 18 months.

As the theme for the 2009 LeWeb Program is “Real-Time Web”, I think it’s going to be a very exciting and timely event. This year’s program will address such topics as:

• Who will win the Twitter vs. Facebook battle?
• How are the other giants Google, Microsoft and MySpace reacting?
• How does this impact mobile and iPhone usage and development?
• Where are the opportunities for entrepreneurs in the real-time ecosystem?
• How brands and marketing have to adapt to this new worldwide real time “word of mouth”.
• What is the new public customer service?
• How do media and news sources reinvent themselves, or embrace the phenomenon and profit from it.

You can see the list of world-class speakers here. If you’re in Europe, I think the event is a must. If you’re based in North America and you believe (like me) that the future of the Web is in “real-time”, Le Web is probably a good event for you also. You can get a 10% discount if you use the following code: BLOG09.

We’ve just released a preliminary agenda.

• 5pm to 6:30pm: buffet, socializing
• 6:30pm to 6:45pm: opening remarks – Louise Clements, Head of Sales, Facebook Canada
• 6:45pm to 7:15pm: first keynote – Hell’s Kitchen: Facebook comme plateforme de jeux vidéos, Emmanuel Delmoly, co-founder Social2U
• 7:15pm to 7:45pm: Facebook Advertising 101 – speaker to be confirmed
• 7:45pm to 8:15pm: break
• 8:15pm to 9:15pm Social Marketing / Facebook Connect
  • Speaker: Marc Snyder – Facebook et politique municipale
  • Speaker: Colin Smilie – Public involvement with Facebook
  • Speaker: Virginia Magaletta – FB Connect Marketing Case Studies
• 9:15pm to 10:00pm: second keynote – Matt Wyndowe, Facebook (Palo Alto, CA) – Topic to be confirmed

Should be an exciting evening. The event is free and you can register here.

Highlights:

Talking about the positive reputation YPG has in the market, the article says “But that halo has now gone the way of carbon paper”

Talking about revenues, the Globe adds: “Yellow Pages’ 2.3-per-cent drop in the first half of this year seems minor by comparison – except for the fact that the company is carrying $2.5-billion in long-term debt, much of it added during the glory years to make acquisitions. While some paper boats are sinking, Mr. Tellier is trying to keep a heavy vessel afloat, managing a century-old company whose main product is a clunky paper directory…”

Talking about the cut in dividend distribution, “There were a lot of people who felt management said one thing and did something else. Investors hate that.”

About online competition, “The Googles of the world, the Yahoos of the world, local search engines, bigger brands branching out, I don’t believe Yellow Pages can sustain itself”

About online revenues, “The online side of Yellow Pages still accounts for less than one-fifth of the business. It could reach 20 per cent by year’s end if management’s guidance is correct. But the question isn’t whether Yellow Pages’ Internet presence is growing; it’s whether it’s growing fast enough to make real money. On the Web, no one holds a monopoly. As is the case with newspapers and magazines, it’s far from certain whether the Web will be enough to compensate for Yellow Pages’ print losses.”

About social media, “And Yellow Pages faces a threat from another dot-com behemoth: Facebook. Social media is chipping away at the directory’s credibility, click by click. (…) That wasn’t bad for Yellow Pages as long as people were just talking to their neighbours over the backyard fence. But now, social media has made it easy for consumers to swap stories and recommendations on public forums. Word of mouth spreads faster than ever before.”

Tellier’s answer on the social media threat, “Marc Tellier argues that’s not enough. “You can’t run a business on word-of-mouth alone,” he says. “In some categories [the shift to online] is going to happen in two or three years. In others it’s going to take 30 years … I would have lost all my hair at the ripe old age of 41 if I believed a lot of what we’d been reading in terms of the pundits – you know, print is dead and so forth. It’s not true.” Many observers disagree. Much as he would like to, Mr. Tellier can’t separate himself from declines in the rest of the print industry.” YPG’s CEO adds later when talking about the last time he used the print directory: “Could I have solved that problem on Facebook? I don’t think so,” he says. “This is a growth industry … The business is remarkably healthy.”

The article concludes by saying: “Now he’ll just have to convince investors of that fact, make them believe his book isn’t a dinosaur on the brink of extinction. That could be the toughest sale of all.”

What it means: Ouch. I think it’s the first time an important Canadian media writes a very negative article on Yellow Pages Group. To be fair to YPG, I believe the Globe’s business section has always been bearish on the company. So, I’m not really surprised the first article of this kind comes from that news source. I also don’t like the comparison to newspapers. We’re definitely not talking about the same business dynamics. I do have to give kudos to the Globe & Mail for mentioning social media as a credible threat to directory publishers. I obviously don’t agree with Tellier when he says he could not have found the business he was looking for using his Facebook friends. Thousands of business references are being shared on social media sites every day and those contribute to market fragmentation in an already very fragmented world. I do agree with Tellier when he says word-of-mouth is not a strategy in itself but directory publishers need to be able to corral all sorts of leads for small merchants including word-of-mouth (social) ones.

I will also be back in Europe, beginning of November, as I will be speaking at the first Local Social Summit in London. The event is happening on November 3rd at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and tickets are still available. If we don’t have the chance to meet next week, we can also schedule something that first week of November as I will probably be traveling to other countries before or after the event.

In a presentation titled “Idearc Mobile Growing Revenue”, Peter Schwab, Director of Mobile Product Development at Idearc Media (Superpages), offered 10 things developers should focus on when building a great mobile local application.

10- Focus on growing your user base (build a great product which offers a simple utility plus a “Wow” factor)

9- Embrace location ( location makes mobile its own medium)

8- Give users a voice (through reviews/ratings and real-time input)

7- Remove barriers (build features and pursue channels that get you closer to the user. “On Deck” model still makes money but has too many barriers. Focus on app stores.)

6- Embrace the hardware (camera, compass, video, voice)

5- Explore alternative distribution channels (take your content where the users are today. He gave the example of Sp411 on Twitter. )

4- Measure everything (measure for mobile, not online)

3- Drive non-Yellow Pages revenues (CPM ads, coupons, sponsorships)

2- Are you a “painkiller” or a “vitamin”? (become an ally of your user, users respond to deals. For example, Idearc ranks superguarantee merchants on top of the search results on mobile)

1- Experiment and grow as mobile grows (no silver bullet yet, don’t be afraid to move beyond Yellow Pages. Land lines are dying and mobile is becoming the primary Internet access. Social brings a new engagement model)

As an interesting note, when asked “how much does it cost to build a mobile application?”, Schwab replied ”if you’re spending more than $25,000 to build an iPhone application, you’re over-paying”

What it means: reading between the lines, Schwab teaches us two important lessons: 1) adapt to the mobile experience (i.e. don’t simply put your web site on mobile). Hardware is different, usage is different, business models are different; 2) the “perfect” mobile local application has not been invented yet. Iterate quickly, try things and go social.

Day two of the DMS ‘09 conference saw a brilliant keynote from Dave Swanson, Chairman and CEO of R.H. Donnelley (RHD). After hearing sobering thoughts from European Yellow Pages leaders at the EADP conference in May (see The Wake-Up Call: “Unless We Change, on the Long Run, We Are Doomed to Disappear” (EADP 2009)), I was really looking forward Swanson’s keynote given the situation RHD found itself in (they filed for Chapter 11 protection in May) after having an amazing stock market ride in the last few years. the Kelsey Group “wanted someone who has had his butt kicked” for this keynote, someone who could explain what happened and what’s ahead for the industry and he didn’t disappoint.

Here’s what happened according to Dave Swanson:

• The economy
  • “It changed everything for everybody. If you look at the timing of ad sale declines, it compares exactly with the economic contraction. If you index Google’s financial results with RHD’s, you realize they have suffered as well. We’ve seen broad-based sales compression. We had enjoyed the longest growth period in history, but it created unsustainable bubbles: housing bubble, advertising bubble, credit bubble (with mergers & acquisitions and leverage buyouts). It was an unsustainable situation because we needed to refinance regularly. There was no money left after the financial bubble burst. When I’m asked “Dave, do you regret this strategy?”  I answer, “no, absolutely not. RHD might not exist today.” “
• Secular changes
  • “Print competition is intense. We keep pointing out the shortcomings of each other’s products. Other local media companies (i.e. newspapers) pitch “against” Yellow Pages also. Media Fragmentation didn’t help as well. Finally, the media trumpeted “no one uses the Yellow Pages anymore” and we became an “environmental hazard” for a segment of the population. We have been very good at shooting ourselves in the foot.”
• Execution
  • New products did not deliver and had a high rate of churn.

Where are we?

• “I hope the freefall from the economy has stopped but I think that we’re a long way to go before “main street” joins the current Wall street rally”
• ” We need multi-platform solutions, more creative pricing, more transparency”
• “Competitive environment is intense. We could see a shake-out. For RHD, the worst is behind us. Financial house must be in order.”
• “We need to challenge the premise of our business”. He gave as example: “do we need separate Internet Yellow Pages platforms and ventured to answer ”I don’t think so”.
• “We will never dominate consumer usage as we did in the past.”
• “We need to become have a service-centric model vs. product-centric model.” RHD’s objective is to be the number one provider of directional services in the eyes of the SMBs in the market they serve. Yellow Pages publishers are provisioning more keywords on search engines with small businesses than anyone else. Because of the channel, this has been a natural extension of their existing product.
• “Execution hasn’t been very good, but we’re getting better and we’ll dominate”
• “Publishers have to look at micro-strategy, geo-vertical opportunities. It’s not one large homogeneous search business.”

Swanson observed it would be very easy to be pessimistic but his philosophy is that when things are going very good, something very bad is about to happen and vice-versa. The next several years will be all about climbing out of the hole but ”it’s going to be a hell of lot more fun than the last two years”.

Following his keynote, I sat down with Dave Swanson for an exclusive interview.

On print innovation

I asked Swanson if he thought there was innovation left in the print product, what he thought a print product would look like in 5 years. He said he thought the print book really works in smaller markets and that he didn’t see much change needed there. But he confirmed he thought the format wasn’t right for urban centers. He suggested limiting geography (smaller scopes), having more relevant information in the books (possibly a subset of headings instead of all of them) and more specialty products. But he also added Yellow Pages were not supposed to be glamorous. They have to be efficient.

On online innovation: verticalization & micro-strategy

I then asked RHD’s CEO where he thought DexKnows.com, their main online property, was going. He said he was extremely happy to have Sean Greene heading their RHD Interactive division (I interviewed Sean a few months ago), bridging print and online culture. He mentioned DexKnows’ future lies in two directions: verticalization and Micro (which I would call hyperlocal)

Verticalization is the improvement of high-potential verticals within Dexknows.com. It means depth of content, aggregate categories/headings and a combination of expert and user content. He gave the example of “wedding” as a meta-category, an interesting vertical.

Micro is recreating a community, a subdivision, a neighborhood within Dexknows.com (or maybe more “local” brands. He wasnt’ allergic to trying other online brands for this initiative). User recommendations would play a big role there. When asked about aggregating hyperlocal information that’s not directly merchant-related (classifieds, neighborhood information, municipal government info, etc.), he remarked that a lot of community information already appears in the print Yellow Pages and said there’s no reason why it shouldn’t appear online.

On social media

Swanson acknowledged that social media has the potential to be a big disruptor in local search (which made me very happy as I’ve been saying that for a couple of years). He called social media “word of mouth on steroid”. He confirmed that Facebook and Twitter are both an opportunity and a threat to directory publishers.

On combating the negative industry press

RHD’s CEO wasn’t too optimistic about industry-wide efforts to combat negative press. He suggested we change the way directory publishers market themselves and start talking to SMBs more to improve their image (instead of doing consumer advertising to garner usage).

What it means: perfect tone for the Swanson’s keynote. Things are not going as well as they used to in the Yellow Pages industry and it doesn’t serve any purpose to hide it. “We will never dominate consumer usage as we did in the past” is most realistic statement I’ve heard in industry recently. At the same time, the industry has tremendous assets it can leverage starting with the direct relationship publishers have with small advertisers. Very happy that RHD is looking at improving the print product in large urban areas. I believe there’s a lot of leg left in a print product that’s tailored to an urban consumer. Ecstatic that Swanson is talking seriously about social media. I sometimes felt like I was preaching in the desert in the last two years… We’ll have to follow RHD closely as they come out of Chapter 11 in the next few months.