Today and tomorrow I’ll be moderating and schmoozing at SMX Local-Mobile, which promises to be very interesting with lots of data and tips and tricks for marketers and others. My posting may be less accordingly. Not sure.

If you’re there I’ll try and meet with you given my time constraints, but the reception tonight is a good time to connect.

I’ve written quite a bit in the past about the rise in local product inventory data or its proxy and how this is really what consumers want: to know if particular products they’re interested in are available in local stores. Here’s a site dedicated to that proposition and the iPhone (data are crawled from the Apple site):

iPhone availability has been a become an issue in the wake of the successful launch of the 3G version. So it’s valuable to have access to something like this. But this is just one instance of a much larger trend, which we’ll be talking about on the SMX Local-Mobile panel “Local-Mobile & Retail.”

ReachLocal has hired a CFO and general counsel:

ReachLocal, Inc. ReachLocal Inc., a leading provider of local Internet marketing solutions for small- to medium-sized businesses, announced today that it has built out its management team with the hiring of Ross Landsbaum as Chief Financial Officer and Adam Wergeles as General Counsel.

Landsbaum joins ReachLocal with more than 20 years of experience in finance and operations at both multi-location customer service-oriented businesses and diversified media companies. Most recently, he was at MacAndrews & Forbes’ Panavision, a leading service provider to the global motion picture and television industries, where he was Chief Financial Officer and, subsequently, Chief Operating Officer. . .

Hiring a CFO is suggestive of an aim at the public markets.

Here are a few recent posts from Local Mobile Search:

• Yahoo Emphasizes LMS
• AT&T See Strong Wireless Growth, Has Voice for iPhone
• Toward a More Useful Twitter
• DMA Study on Mobile Marketing Presents Mixed Picture
• Bango: Uniques Most Important Metric
• CallGenie in Ads Deal with Broadcaster Media
• Audacious TechCrunch Tablet Project
• Qik Now in Public Beta, on iPhone
• Opera Releases New Mobile Browser

Call it a generational divide. I’m in my 40s and I don’t find Facebook as enthralling as others who are younger and see it as their primary communications tool. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn (more than MySpace) have the potential to be a kind of “dashboard” for their users, helping them manage communications and content across the Internet. (LinkedIn has done deals with BusinessWeek and more recently with the NYTimes to integrate “recommended” news content.)

The communications and community angle makes it potentially more valuable and personal than search, which is a kind of generic utility. And just yesterday Facebook launched its long-anticipated redesign and is now somewhat more usable. But in my view it doesn’t go far enough.

Today the company is also having the second of its developer conferences. But it seems to me there’s a larger vision missing, though the company is plainly ambitious.

I’ve always critiqued Facebook as more about novelty and entertainment than utility. Those who love Facebook and use it daily obviously disagree and stress the communications value of the site. And some find it an effective marketing vehicle. How would I make the site more “useful?”

• First I’d add Web search, which I always thought would be provided by Microsoft, but I discovered that it wasn’t part of the deal when Microsoft invested.
• Then I’d take a page from MyYahoo or iGoogle and create an area where users could set up feed widgets of their favorite content.
• Partly my complaints about Facebook are about the UI, which the company has addressed somewhat with its redesign.

But, in my mind, Facebook should be the single place where I can:

• Manage and read important content (feeds, alerts)
• Search the Internet for information (since I’m already there)
• Search friendfeeds for recommendations
• Search apps content (metasearch) for recommendations or desired information.

In particular, local content and recommendations should be much stronger on Facebook than they are. This is a particularly strange weakness given Facebook’s location-specific legacy.

Then there are the ad challenges. Facebook is undermonetizing in part because people are mostly there to communicate and have fun. If some of these directional tools that I’m suggesting are added then there are more, and more effective, monetization opportunities that emerge. COO Sheryl Sandberg (an ex-Google VP) certainly understands that.

That’s the title of a comprehensive new report from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. The report is the product of a survey of more than 250 senior editors and offers an assessment of the state of journalism and the newspaper industry. Here’s a great nugget from the introduction that perfectly captures the paradox of where news is today:

Despite an image of decline, more people today in more places read the content produced in the newsrooms of American daily newspapers than at any time in years. But revenues are tumbling. The editors expect the financial picture only to worsen, and they have little confidence that they know what their papers will look like in five years.

News and content are thriving online but the traditional business model is under siege. This translates into a scramble for new revenue streams and cutbacks in staffing and coverage:

Convincing newspaper advertising sales staff to become more active in selling to the web is also viewed as an essential, overdue step, even if it’s not easy. Roughly 90% of advertising sales remain with the print media. In interviews, newsroom executives complained that advertising departments traditionally have been far more resistant than their editorial counterparts to the changes brought by the Internet Age. Understandably, there is less incentive to go after a pot containing 10% of the revenues than to go after one with 90%. But some editors warn that if advertising staffs don’t shift their focus now, they could end up with nothing in a matter of years because there would be no print edition left.

(This statement could have equally been made about the YP industry a couple of years ago and still could be made in some cases today.)

Smaller publications have suffered somewhat less than larger metro dailies:

The hammer has hit newspapers with circulations of over 100,000 significantly harder than those with smaller circulations. Fully 85% of these larger papers have reduced newsroom staff in the past three years, compared with 52% at the smaller papers. The cuts made by larger papers have also been marginally deeper than those carried out by their smaller counterparts and newshole shrinkage has been more dramatic.

International news is diminishing, local news and “zoned editions” are growing, specialized news beats have been cut with reporters assigned to multiple beats (which can compromise local coverage). But investigative journalism still appears to be valued at many papers. Stories are also getting shorter.

The conclusions of the report are somewhat unspecific and inconclusive:

In the end, however, editors remain convinced the key to their survival is a good business model and strong journalism. As one editor interviewed for this named three basic ingredients needed “not just to survive, but thrive:” excellent journalism, strong investment to stay on the cutting edge of technology, and aggressive marketing of the product.

“If we do all those things, we’ll be fine—whether we’re 80% print and 20% web, 80% web and 20% print or 2% print and 98% web,” this editor said, though he asked that his comments be on background. “The profit margins may never be Gannett-like at 40-45% of revenue, but I think you can have a healthy business.”

Some editors predicted the future of newspapers will eventually be decided, not in print, but in a cyberspace fight for advertising between sites that provide entertainment and social networking on one side, and those that provide information and analysis on the other.

The key to survival is finding the right balance between cost and coverage and finding ways to wring more money out of the electronic editions of the paper and related online products. To that end I believe that papers need to “diversify” and do lots of things online that don’t necessarily look like “newspapers” but instead look more like search, shopping tools and social media.

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Here’s Borrell data summarized by eMarketer that shows projected online newspaper ad revenue growth:

See also, data from Northwestern’s Readership Institute on newspaper readership trends online and off.

This Thursday and Friday will see the arrival of the SMX Local-Mobile show in San Francisco.

I’ll be moderating numerous sessions with Chris Sherman and others. If there’s any question about whether to attend this event you should pay the money and come!

Changes in consumer behavior several years ago created an imperative for businesses large and small to have an online presence. Yet there is still some uncertainty and even skepticism about the precise relationship between the Internet and in-store purchases (despite my consistent rating and raving about it) and the efforts of others like ShopLocal to establish the connection.

Nielsen just released some data that shows again how critical it is for retailers to think about the relationship between the Internet and their stores. It doesn’t get more explicit than this:

A Nielsen survey in May 2008 found that among a representative group of people who had recently made consumer electronics purchases in a brick and mortar store, 80 percent bought from a store whose Web site they visited first. Further, 53 percent purchased from the retailer on whose Web site they had spent the most time.

(my emphasis)

Nielsen asked, “If you were only able to use one source of information to support your next consumer electronics purchase, which would you choose?”

• Internet – 58%
• Visit to local stores – 25%
• Reviews in newspapers/magazines – 8%
• Friends and family – 8%
• Other – 1%

This is just one survey but it’s also one more survey that confirms the overwhelming trend: consumers research online and buy offline.

Chris Smith, who’s one of the moderators at the forthcoming most excellent SMX Local-Mobile show (this week), writes about the much-predicted demise of the print yellow pages. As he points out Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and others have broadly and repeatedly forecast the decline of traditional media.

Ballmer in a recent WashingtonPost interview said, there “will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network.” Paper newspapers and magazines disappear. Everything that remains, says Ballmer, comes in electronic form. I say traditional media and print YP will survive. Let’s be clear on that.

Whether they will remain as profitable as they’ve been is quite another matter. The important questions surround:

• Who’s using them as a primary source?
• What are the margins?
• Have internal cultural and organizational issues around digital ad sales been addressed or not?
• Are these media offering a compelling mix of products to their advertisers?
• How are they packaging and promoting them?
• What are their churn rates?
• Are they fending off lower-priced competitors offering comparable products

These questions are not of the sexy “will the newspapers or print YP be around in ten years?” variety but they’re the critical ones facing these industries.

TiVo and Amazon have teamed up to enable TiVo owners to buy products (from Amazon) featured in shows they watch. Even as users stop to buy products/things on the shows, TiVo will continue to record the program or will have recorded the program so the show can be resumed after the transaction.

Amazon already did this with its “FishBowl” show with Bill Maher (now defunct):

Each segment is selling something that you can buy on Amazon and that product is displayed under or near the viewer during the segment (sometimes that product changes dynamically during the segment depending on the conversation [e.g., a book, then a DVD]).

Some thoughts:

• This has long been a fantasy for “interactive television”
• TiVo has roughly 4 million subscribers, which is large yet tiny in the context of the overall TV audience
• User experience is the key to making this a success (education is a part of that)
• QVC and HSN (as well as direct response TV) has long been established so this isn’t a radically new model in one sense.

This is a great channel potentially for Amazon to expand and extend its reach. Eventually, however, the full Internet will be available “in the living room” through an IP-connected box or cable. So the question is: will seeing a product worn by a celebrity, etc. generate an “impulse” product purchase?

It depends and very much remains to be seen. But I would imagine that this offering will see some success on repeat or second viewings. In other words, I see the product, understand I can buy it and then go back and buy upon a second look. Social features can and should be integrated to allow for people to chat about products over the TV. However, TiVo doesn’t permit people to be watching the same show at the same time unless people are actually watching live TV.

This will be a very interesting experiment to see whether making shows “clickable” will drive product sales. My sense is that this initial trial will give way to something else that will be more successful.

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Travel is another category this could be very good for but in a less impulse sort of way. I see a show on Thailand and decide I might like to go there. I might be able to sign up for travel alerts or emails about the place and from hotels or airlines that service Thailand, for example.