Hitting Them Where They Live - Steven Berlin Johnson / Chris Tolles - Web 2.0 Expo NYC
Steven Berlin Johnson - outside.in
Chris Tolles - CEO topix
Sept 18/08
Raw notes
How local is emerging on the web
Topix: aggregator
Categorize geo-locally to zipcodes
Half traffic on 10% of pages that were local
At the time, no-one else doing that at the time
We spend locally
90% of consumer purchases are made within person's home or office
Internet influenced sales
Offline sales, but internet influenced
Local online ad forecasts: very big market
Steven Johnson
The Geo-web
6,000 placebloggers in outside in
Roughly 100,000 who write about location occasionally
Founded Feed Mag in 1995, turned into full time writer, living in Brooklyn, writing books
Last book: 2006: compulsively going to this new class of sites
Local bloggers: place bloggers
Lots of them in browstone Brooklyn
Covering a part of world that no traditional form had covered to date
Vitally important to me: physically proximate. Flying under traditional news sources.
Suddenly: coming via media
Really interesting: couldn't have gotten a year ago. Zone of life I care most about. My neighbourhood.
Maybe we can organize this information. Can't say show me all the conversations about schools within 10 blocks of my house.
Maybe we can organize stuff coming from local bloggers
Built outside.in
Geo-web: emerging movement
Geotags are to the geo web what links were to the original web
Agreed upon geographic location of pages on the web
Real world space, not just virtual space of URLs
Once agreed upon, you can build a lot on top of it.
Disagree what it means if you agree on where it is
Geotag adoption is slow. 5% of flickr photos tagged
70% of twitter messages come with default location of user
< 1% geocoded precisely
3% of hyperlocal posts tracked by outside in
Geotoolkit: launched today
Helping publishers optimize their stuff for the web
Hyperlocal at Web 2.0
Panel at web 2.0
Outside in: recognizes Javits Centre - place attached to this post
Figures out neighbourhoods that it's tagged to
Dedicated page on Javits page. Shows up throughout outside.in
Radar: 1000 feet of what's happening here right now
Van has exploded within 1000 feet of your house. Outside in: restaurant: dizzie's, near SBJ's house.
Something that would never show up in the NY Times. But it matters to me.
Entire flow of info that got to me, not professional journalists. Amateurs, blogging, posting, etc.
A bit of automation magic. Recognition of patterns
Storymaps: submit your feed, see a map of stories written about, etc.
Combination of geographic and temporal - last 2 weeks, 4 weeks, etc.
Post: hyperlocal at web 2.0 on SBJ's site.
It's not just a post, it's kinda an ad.
It is an ad.
People creating ads. I'm interested in getting this ad out to people within 10 blocks of the pizza place.
Possible due to geoweb platform.
Extraordinary change. As platforms more commonplace. All of that advertising money trapped offline, much more effective way to get to people close to them.
Chris/Topix
A different approach: we had 30,000 zip code level news pages
We could geotag news content semantically
There weren't enough stories to fill the pages
We gave them the platform to roll their own.
Launched in 2004 - local interesting.
Chris's background: started Open Directory project
Uh Oh: not enough news
The problem: not enough local content
1400 daily newspapers, x 6 papers / day
1200 news stations x 3 stories
1700 tv stations x 4 stories/day
Total number of local stories / day 22,293
But 32,000 zip codes, 22,000 stories = bad user experience
Local news is not yet a search problem
Little towns like this stuff. Local hits: 40 to 50% comes from outside of a designated metro area
Outside of major cities in USA. Local content, small towns. Everyone wants local news.
Creating local voice on the web
Screenshot: Albany Forum
Last updated posts in the forum
Albany google ads
Screenshot: Paris, Tx
Larger amount of comments in the forum
No Paris Texas ads. Texas ads
Screenshot: Somerset, Kentucky
Even smaller town, Huge forum usage
No local ads: phentramine ad!?!
But no ad inventory in Kentucky.
Lag in the ads going locally. But a lot of people who buy here.
The punchline:
Market for local advertising is big
Growing 4 to 6 times in next 4 years
8B to 12B market by 2012
People buy stuff in person where they live
Geoweb emerging to connect content to location
Geotagged content in place, in volume today
Big opportunity
SBJ:
Everybody (online) lives somewhere - mantra
Pothole paradox: other people's local news is the most boring stuff ever
Highschool sports news from somewhere else, least interesting thing you can imagine
Small town / big city difference
People would come to neighbourhood page
They did, but vast majority is going through search to place pages (school, convention centre)
Neighbourhood is almost too big
Want very precise information
Looked at logs: correction facility in LA was #1 page for the day
Where paris hilton was spending for 30 days
One of two pages
Huge traffic for place pages
Distribution of traffic vs population centres
Top 50 cities that you track
Less media competition in smaller places
You can rank higher, better search, etc.
What's the right neighbourhood unit - how do you divide it?
Not postal code? Harness community to help you define that.
Lot of commentary about
Steven: when are you coming to Canada? (Gord asks SBJ a question)
Didn't have to invent the platform: geo maps, coders, get the place database: next few months
Easier to build for Canada, given the geoweb platform exists
Figuring that out: next few months - also UK launch
Reluctance about local: people think pizza guy
But there's a lot of businesses beyond the pizza guy
Tons of interesting local businesses that could be doing advertising at a local level
Radar: pulling out neighborhood names
Twitter tweet can show up in 1000 feet view
Adding geo data in
Feeling that you're overhearing conversations: Clive Thompson: Ambient information in the Times
Within 1000 feet - interesting to see what people are talking about
Have to be able to turn it off, have to turn off people (real estate dudes)
Noise: don't want to hear people, filters
Topix: search engine geeks
About vs. mention
Create a vector, radius, how much its' about - math stuff
Sometimes you want it, sometimes you don't. Tough heuristic problem
Depends on kind of stories. Vague description of area
Potholes vs. exploding trucks: core problem of geobased content & scale?
Given piece of content has radius of relevancy
How do you determine the "radius of relevancy?" - don't have to wade through 300 photos of what people took in my neighbourhood.
Let you know if you're on fire: SBJ haha.
Filters: zooms out: long zoom
1000 ft, neighborhood, city, places you're following (powers of 10 type stuff)
Track things you care about
What you see in neighborhood view: 3 stories that came along from 3 different blogs
Van example: organically happens
Experiment: techmeme type hot topic. People talking about this in this community, cluster that.
Gonna take some thinking.
Volume of newsstream is critical
Whether using Digg: humans
Google news: aggregate stuff
How many people writing (intensity), closeness
Need a lot of people
Only one person wrote about it: not intense, but still may be important
Until you have a lot of stories about a given area, cross posts, then interesting
But takes critical mass
One story vs 10 stories, good job, but 1 story vs 2 stories, not good
Location of device (reader) matters, but location of content really matters too.
Geo contextually relevant advertising about content
Local content in a local context: 4 times more effective
Local content and local advertising: more digestible
Chris Tolles - CEO topix
Sept 18/08
Raw notes
How local is emerging on the web
Topix: aggregator
Categorize geo-locally to zipcodes
Half traffic on 10% of pages that were local
At the time, no-one else doing that at the time
We spend locally
90% of consumer purchases are made within person's home or office
Internet influenced sales
Offline sales, but internet influenced
Local online ad forecasts: very big market
Steven Johnson
The Geo-web
6,000 placebloggers in outside in
Roughly 100,000 who write about location occasionally
Founded Feed Mag in 1995, turned into full time writer, living in Brooklyn, writing books
Last book: 2006: compulsively going to this new class of sites
Local bloggers: place bloggers
Lots of them in browstone Brooklyn
Covering a part of world that no traditional form had covered to date
Vitally important to me: physically proximate. Flying under traditional news sources.
Suddenly: coming via media
Really interesting: couldn't have gotten a year ago. Zone of life I care most about. My neighbourhood.
Maybe we can organize this information. Can't say show me all the conversations about schools within 10 blocks of my house.
Maybe we can organize stuff coming from local bloggers
Built outside.in
Geo-web: emerging movement
Geotags are to the geo web what links were to the original web
Agreed upon geographic location of pages on the web
Real world space, not just virtual space of URLs
Once agreed upon, you can build a lot on top of it.
Disagree what it means if you agree on where it is
Geotag adoption is slow. 5% of flickr photos tagged
70% of twitter messages come with default location of user
< 1% geocoded precisely
3% of hyperlocal posts tracked by outside in
Geotoolkit: launched today
Helping publishers optimize their stuff for the web
Hyperlocal at Web 2.0
Panel at web 2.0
Outside in: recognizes Javits Centre - place attached to this post
Figures out neighbourhoods that it's tagged to
Dedicated page on Javits page. Shows up throughout outside.in
Radar: 1000 feet of what's happening here right now
Van has exploded within 1000 feet of your house. Outside in: restaurant: dizzie's, near SBJ's house.
Something that would never show up in the NY Times. But it matters to me.
Entire flow of info that got to me, not professional journalists. Amateurs, blogging, posting, etc.
A bit of automation magic. Recognition of patterns
Storymaps: submit your feed, see a map of stories written about, etc.
Combination of geographic and temporal - last 2 weeks, 4 weeks, etc.
Post: hyperlocal at web 2.0 on SBJ's site.
It's not just a post, it's kinda an ad.
It is an ad.
People creating ads. I'm interested in getting this ad out to people within 10 blocks of the pizza place.
Possible due to geoweb platform.
Extraordinary change. As platforms more commonplace. All of that advertising money trapped offline, much more effective way to get to people close to them.
Chris/Topix
A different approach: we had 30,000 zip code level news pages
We could geotag news content semantically
There weren't enough stories to fill the pages
We gave them the platform to roll their own.
Launched in 2004 - local interesting.
Chris's background: started Open Directory project
Uh Oh: not enough news
The problem: not enough local content
1400 daily newspapers, x 6 papers / day
1200 news stations x 3 stories
1700 tv stations x 4 stories/day
Total number of local stories / day 22,293
But 32,000 zip codes, 22,000 stories = bad user experience
Local news is not yet a search problem
Little towns like this stuff. Local hits: 40 to 50% comes from outside of a designated metro area
Outside of major cities in USA. Local content, small towns. Everyone wants local news.
Creating local voice on the web
Screenshot: Albany Forum
Last updated posts in the forum
Albany google ads
Screenshot: Paris, Tx
Larger amount of comments in the forum
No Paris Texas ads. Texas ads
Screenshot: Somerset, Kentucky
Even smaller town, Huge forum usage
No local ads: phentramine ad!?!
But no ad inventory in Kentucky.
Lag in the ads going locally. But a lot of people who buy here.
The punchline:
Market for local advertising is big
Growing 4 to 6 times in next 4 years
8B to 12B market by 2012
People buy stuff in person where they live
Geoweb emerging to connect content to location
Geotagged content in place, in volume today
Big opportunity
SBJ:
Everybody (online) lives somewhere - mantra
Pothole paradox: other people's local news is the most boring stuff ever
Highschool sports news from somewhere else, least interesting thing you can imagine
Small town / big city difference
People would come to neighbourhood page
They did, but vast majority is going through search to place pages (school, convention centre)
Neighbourhood is almost too big
Want very precise information
Looked at logs: correction facility in LA was #1 page for the day
Where paris hilton was spending for 30 days
One of two pages
Huge traffic for place pages
Distribution of traffic vs population centres
Top 50 cities that you track
Less media competition in smaller places
You can rank higher, better search, etc.
What's the right neighbourhood unit - how do you divide it?
Not postal code? Harness community to help you define that.
Lot of commentary about
Steven: when are you coming to Canada? (Gord asks SBJ a question)
Didn't have to invent the platform: geo maps, coders, get the place database: next few months
Easier to build for Canada, given the geoweb platform exists
Figuring that out: next few months - also UK launch
Reluctance about local: people think pizza guy
But there's a lot of businesses beyond the pizza guy
Tons of interesting local businesses that could be doing advertising at a local level
Radar: pulling out neighborhood names
Twitter tweet can show up in 1000 feet view
Adding geo data in
Feeling that you're overhearing conversations: Clive Thompson: Ambient information in the Times
Within 1000 feet - interesting to see what people are talking about
Have to be able to turn it off, have to turn off people (real estate dudes)
Noise: don't want to hear people, filters
Topix: search engine geeks
About vs. mention
Create a vector, radius, how much its' about - math stuff
Sometimes you want it, sometimes you don't. Tough heuristic problem
Depends on kind of stories. Vague description of area
Potholes vs. exploding trucks: core problem of geobased content & scale?
Given piece of content has radius of relevancy
How do you determine the "radius of relevancy?" - don't have to wade through 300 photos of what people took in my neighbourhood.
Let you know if you're on fire: SBJ haha.
Filters: zooms out: long zoom
1000 ft, neighborhood, city, places you're following (powers of 10 type stuff)
Track things you care about
What you see in neighborhood view: 3 stories that came along from 3 different blogs
Van example: organically happens
Experiment: techmeme type hot topic. People talking about this in this community, cluster that.
Gonna take some thinking.
Volume of newsstream is critical
Whether using Digg: humans
Google news: aggregate stuff
How many people writing (intensity), closeness
Need a lot of people
Only one person wrote about it: not intense, but still may be important
Until you have a lot of stories about a given area, cross posts, then interesting
But takes critical mass
One story vs 10 stories, good job, but 1 story vs 2 stories, not good
Location of device (reader) matters, but location of content really matters too.
Geo contextually relevant advertising about content
Local content in a local context: 4 times more effective
Local content and local advertising: more digestible
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