Opportunities with real time local search and content

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Opportunities with Real-time Local Search and Content

Rise of the Real-Time Web

Pushing information to users as soon as it's available

Implemented in social networks, search, news, etc. - more like instant messaging

Users interaction in real-time as well

Benefit: increased user engagement

Will likely become ubiquitous, a requirement for almost any website or service.

Source: ReadWriteWeb

A World of Tweets

Source: http://aworldoftweets.frogdesign.com/

Multitude of Real-Time Content Sources

TwitterFacebook’s public activity streamLinkedin updatesLocation data (Foursquare, Facebook Places, etc.)YouTube videosWikipedia updatesBlog postsNews media articlesSearches / clicks / callsOther social media sites like MySpace, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg

Nowism: What it Means

Content: unheard scale and scope (user participation)

Consumers are looking for instant gratification (real-time products, services and experience)

Business intelligence: in your face

Conversations: become part of it, engage and initiate conversations (join the “now”)

Source: Trendwatching

Global Brain and Online Pulse

Consumers: “A truly real-time snapshot of what the world is thinking, doing, protesting (if not fighting) for and against, loving, reviewing, buying, feeling, attending, traveling to, donating to, gossiping about, asking for, hating, wearing, watching, eating, reading, drinking, listening to...”

Businesses: “A world of real-time customer service, real time offers, real-time product and advertising testing, real-time Q&A, real-time feedback, real-time co-creation.”

Source: Trendwatching,

(Partially) Blame Mobile

How is real-time search and content used today?

Google Instant

Google now predicts search queries and begins serving up results as searchers type, reducing the amount of time it takes to perform a search.

Saves more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second.

Google Realtime

Google Shared Link Information

Source: Newsgrange, http://newsgrange.com/?p=2195

Bing Social

“Liked” results from Facebook friends

Real-time search results

Source: http://www.discoverbing.com/facebook

Content Aggregation

Curated content

Curated listsHuffington Politics Twitter edition

Collecta feed

Live Event Coverage

Live tweeting and live blogging

Coveritlive

Real-Time Location-Based Services

Experimental Real-Time Location Tracking on Google Latitude on Android

Mayor Maker iPhone app

Natural Disasters

Earthquakes

US Geological Survey developed a Twitter-based earthquake detection system

Source: ecopolitology.org

“Seismologists say Twitter could be the fastest way to get information out of an earthquake area, especially in those less densely populated with seismic instruments.”

Political Trends

2010 US Midterm Elections

Source: New York Times, “The Election Will Be Tweeted (and Retweeted)”, October 2010

Allocating Resources: News Media

“Because of technology that can pinpoint what people online are viewing and commenting on, how much time they spend with an article and even how much money an article makes in advertising revenue, newspapers can make more scientific decisions about allocating their ever scarcer resources.”

Source: New York Times, “Some Newspapers, Tracking Readers Online, Shift Coverage”,September 5, 2010

What does real-time means for directory publishers?

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New Local Content

Need structured real-time local content

Think headings / business names / brands / services / questions & answers / etc.

Think classification / structuring / natural language processing / linguists

Make it relevant for your users

Real-Time Activities

Display your own activities

Millions of searches, clicks, views, calls, driving directions every month

Your sites are extremely alive but they look dead

Real-time Product Inventory

Product & brand names

National advertisers with local presence

Holy grail: local merchant inventory

Reputation Management

The process of tracking actions, mentions, opinions, discussions about a merchant

Reporting on those actions and opinions

Sentiment analysis

Reacting to that report creating a feedback loop.

Source: Wikipedia

Real-time Business Opportunities

Identifying business opportunities in social media

Heading-based needs / life events that trigger Yellow Pages usage

“Can anyone recommend...”

Interact

Report

Data Mining to Influence Search Results

Determine trends, before they happen

Gauge demand of products / services on a day to day basis.

Serving the right result at the right time

Yield management

The process of understanding, anticipating and influencing consumer behavior in order to maximize revenue or profits from a fixed, perishable resource

What does yield management look like in a Yellow Pages environment?

Are searches a “perishable resource”?

Optimal allocation of leads? Dayparting?

You are Data Companies

Don’t believe what you’ve heard

Directory companies are data companies

You have 10+ years of local search history

Mine your data

You can probably use this to improve people’s lives (and solve the time crunch!)

BUT: This is not only about real-time

This is about “time”

This is about the temporal Web

Why is the Temporal Web Important?

“We have unlimited space (inventory) on the Internet but

limited time.”

Steve Rubel, Edelman Digital

Source: tro-fodo-tiko.blogspot.com

Merci!

Sébastien ProvencherCo-founder, Praized Media

www.needium.com

[email protected]

http://blogs.praized.com/seb

http://twitter.com/sebprovencher