Here are six trends in 2012 that will impact hyperlocal media and business models. This was originally published at Street Fight last week.

1. Cross platform conversations

Livefyre and Disqus show glimpses of how conversations can move from Facebook and Twitter to online media and blog commentary. Local conversations happening on social media, especially Facebook, simply aren’t crossing over onto local media. Note the interaction on a city community page like San Francisco; it’s huge, but random in topic.

The big opportunity is to organize local conversations that are now happening on, say, the community page above, into topics like sports, culture, movies, things to do, business, family, etc. In 2012, cross platform systems that facilitate community engagement across all social media along these topics will develop. The current best example of local topical engagement is sports media like SBNation and Bleacher Report that encourage sports blogging and fan interaction at the local team level.

2. Influence peddling at a local level

The advent of Klout and other new forms of social influence tabulation mirrors the slow power shift of media influence from traditional to social channels. Anybody with a voice can build a following, and the new business models evolving around influence metrics allow businesses to reward influencers with the hopes of converting them into advocates.

On a national level, social influence has naturally followed the celebrities; Britney, basketball players and Obama come to mind. On a local level, social influence is still up for grabs. Many sports bloggers became part of the SBNation empire simply by being bloggers for their local team. The implied business model is local influencers will attract rewarding opportunities, whether it’s in the form of a media job or simply a perk from a local business wanting to engage them.

The recognition of consumer generated revenue opportunities

A candid consumer recommendation, or a compilation of great Yelp reviews, is far more credible for a business than an advertisement. Local businesses will be able mine and filter local conversations across the social media, and participate in social marketing their services to elicit favorable reactions and revenue opportunities. For example, high school and college students often use Facebook to set Friday night plans. The most influential of them will move crowds, and local businesses, like pizza restaurants and movie theaters, will build relationships with influencers using rewards, loyalty programs, or simply a friendly dialogue.

example: using Needium to create business building dialogue

Startups are developing to provide localized services to filter, monitor and engage consumers on behalf of small business. For example, Needium monitors Twitter for specific keywords and phrases such as “looking for a lunch spot in Union Square”, that signal consumer demand for their local business client, and then converses with Tweeters on behalf of their client. They are basically building a personalized geolocated mobile response system for local marketing.

Local brands move to app development

The rapid adoption to mobile platforms impels brands like Walgreens and Starbucks to create apps specific to the needs of their mobile consumer. Local brands are headed down the same path. Yes, being on Yelp, Foursquare and Google Places provides social visibility but it limits the consumer interaction to just a check-in deal. A local merchant should have its own app complete with loyalty program, special deals, inventory search and topical information that its customers need. Building a mobile app is still beyond the pale of 99.9% of local merchants, and it’s surprising I haven’t seen a startup financed to create turnkey mobile apps for small business.

Emergence of the local social media marketing agencies

The dearth of startups serving local business with mobile app development is indicative of a larger hole to fill: there are still few turnkey social marketing agencies serving the over 4 million small businesses in America. Local business needs turnkey solutions because the resources required to learn, implement and execute a comprehensive social marketing are daunting. 2012 will bring scalable turnkey service companies like Main Street Hub devoted to managing local social marketing for SMBs.

The New Role for Bricks and Mortar

Retailers can’t escape the impact of Amazon Price Checker and Groupon on their business. In-store price checking and daily deals threaten customer retention and profit margins respectively, and they certainly aren’t going away. So how will bricks and mortar remain relevant to, and more importantly, build loyalty from local consumers?

Before social media, the decision to visit a local business was based on personal need. Now, more decisions are based on serendipitous search for things to do, what to eat, where their friends are, and special deals. Bricks and mortar can position themselves to be destinations simply by making sure they are visible, preferably with attractive offers sprinkled here and there, in all the media consumer use to find them. They remain relevant because there are potentially more tangible reasons for people to go out! Foursquare and Yelp check-ins, events planning services like Meetup and Plancast, and mobile location services will be the currency that supplements local traffic to business.

Check Facebook’s new “hybrid” news feed. You’ll see your friends, especially those well-liked baby and pet pictures posts. But you won’t see very many brands you once saw, particularly those that link to news, information, pictures and video. I myself subscribe to lots of media, and they have all disappeared from the feed.

The issue is being addressed at Facebook’s developer forum: Bugs - New news feed doesn’t show posts with pictures or links in them

Sure I like my friends’ pet pictures, but I now rely much more heavily on Google+ and Twitter for substantive conversations on and discovery of non-personal topics I’m interested in. Furthermore, there is no reason for any brand to advertise on Facebook because if they capture a “like”, that reader will eventually disappear because they won’t be able to see that brand’s future Facebook feeds.

I’m surprised at the lack of conversation about this issue because Facebook is alienating the commercial brands that are its customer base.

It’s the INUNDATION factor.

Since I do not intimately know most of my Facebook friends, I do not want to be inundated by:

1) Where they have checked in

2) What music they listen to

3) What they “like” on Facebook

Facebook’s new platform changes confirms their mission to broadcast (or a more kind term, to “share”) everything people do on social applications associated with Facebook by default. The new protocol is called “frictionless sharing” . This comment from Hacker News “Facebook is Scaring Me” explains the problem:

The reason why this bothers me is that there is no longer any EXPLICIT confirmation that I want to post something. Not sure who said it but I read it in a TechCrunch article, “Just hit play in Spotify and it will share with your friends”.

No, any sharing I do HAS to REQUIRE an EXPLICIT action on my part. I have to be in full control. Visiting a web site does not mean that I believe it will be interesting to my friends NOR do I want that information shared with people on Facebook.

A like button that shares, much like the Google+ 1+ button is perfectly fine, I have to hover over it, and choose my circles to share with, and then share. It is not automatic once I visit the site.

I don’t want articles automatically being linked just because I visited a page, or clicked play in Spotify, or put the toilet seat up.

It is not just privacy concerns, it is the image I try to convey while using social media sites where it is common place to be friends with your boss and or co-workers. I don’t need them knowing I like the Bloodhound Gang or that I read articles about atheism in the NYT but have never read a single article about religion.

Eventually all this collected data will be used against me. What if I do a simple Google search for cancer and I end up reading an article about it, that is now shared publicly, my insurance company a few years later gets a claim for cancer they claim it was a pre-existing condition and deny me coverage.

These are all scenarios going through my head. I am all for the interconnected web, and making it easier for me to introduce my friends to new content across it, however it has to be done on my terms, it has to require explicit authorization and must never do something automatically without my consent.

The reason we’re all seeing second-by-second updates on everything being listened on Spotify is likely due to the default checkmark that enables Facebook sharing (at the bottom of the screenshot). Spotify in fact now requires new users to be on Facebook so it’s automatic. Nobody gives it a second thought to uncheck it because it seems like a good thing.

"Get personal recommendations by sending music you play to Facebook's Open Graph"

When every social app defaults to frictionless sharing (and they all will because it is potent viral publicity), Facebook will become unusable.

It’s always been my philosophy on social media to contribute critical and interesting information related to my business, causes and hobbies, but not the daily personal life stuff that really doesn’t matter to the world.

Advice: turn off Spotify and other notification settings on Facebook app settings (Account Settings / Applications); you’ll likely need to go directly to the apps preferences page to turn them off manually. It’s a bother to do, and that’s why you’ll eventually be inundated with notifications from thousands of apps by millions of people who aren’t turning each one off individually.

I don’t think I’m alone here in hating this.

Facebook announced yesterday that businesses can add deals and rewards for their customers who check in through Facebook Places. The impact on local advertising is huge:

1. Deals will be everywhere

The “Deal” becomes the currency of local advertising because it is performance based, efficient for reaching the customer and isn’t burdened with the CPM-based campaign costs of traditional commercial or banner advertising.

2. The merchant cost for placing a deal drops to zero

Any merchant can add their own deal to Facebook Places free – see the Facebook Deal video. Groupon introduced their self service Daily Deal system called Groupon Stores only two weeks ago, and charges 10% of coupon value, a deep discount from the 50% fee they have been charging for their Deal of the Day promotion. At zero cost, running a deal becomes a no-brainer for merchants. Note that Facebook states they can reject frivolous or low quality deals so it can create a value-laden brand that can’t be dismissed like those junk mail coupon books we always throw away.

3. Deals = instant gratification

Facebook Deals immediately rewards consumers based on where they are. No need to print out a coupon beforehand. Every mobile app – Foursquare, Yelp, Groupon – will be forced to follow suit with a similar instant rewards program in order to remain relevant.

4. The “Check-In” becomes the proxy for the “Like” button

Simply put, the better the merchant deal on Facebook Deals, the more Check-ins it receives. The more Check-ins, the more exposure the merchant receives. Again, Yelp, Groupon and Foursquare will need to incorporate Check-in deals within their product offerings, but they will have a hard time competing with Facebook’s massive database of users.

Expect a lot of market adaptation from these mobile players to create business models that can coincide with Facebook Deals or work together with Facebook. For example, FourSquare can’t really charge merchants to add Check-in deals now that it’s free on Facebook. They may need to partner with other local deals services, i.e. Groupon or LivingSocial, to help promote their deals within an affiliate arrangement based on FourSquare check-ins (see next point).

5. Deal exposure and syndication becomes the value-add premium

Imagine the day when every local business has a deal up. How do they stand out? Groupon has created two tiers of promotion for their merchants that takes cuts of 30% or 50% of coupon value based on campaign reach:

Facebook is well equipped with targeted Facebook Ads to assist merchants in promoting their deals for a premium. Expect seamless integration of Deals and Ads in future Facebook marketing. Expect Yelp and other local ad-based businesses to create a similar tiered advertising model.

6. Deals open up affiliate opportunities

Everybody craves a deal. But the Deals landscape is very fragmented (anybody who receives loads of coupons and deals in their inbox will attest to this) and will become even more so with new channels like Safeway.com Personalized Deals and mobile rewards apps rapidly coming online (see points 8 and 9).

Deal aggregation systems like TheDealMap that expose every deal on a map and Yipit that emails a list of local daily deals to subscribers are positioned as deals portals to the consumer. Online systems that can connect deals with customers will be rewarded.

7. Local media well positioned for deal syndication and affiliate relationships

Local media outlets – TV, radio, newspapers – have been watching advertising dollars inexorably move online over the past decade. They now have the opportunity to leverage their local consumer brands to connect deals advertisers with their readership. The most innovative media companies will set up their own deals platforms that replicate what Groupon Stores is offering at premium pricing, or just work with Groupon Stores and share revenues.

8. Retailers are setting up their own deals platforms

National chains have the advantage of leveraging their scale to provide services local merchants can’t compete with. My local Safeway knows what I purchase through my shopping card, and can promote deals for items I normally purchase. Simply by clicking the “Add” button, Safeway automatically gives me the discounted “personalized” price without printing coupons.

9. Expect new mobile apps that provide instant discounts at point of purchase

Shopkick and Checkpoints are two mobile apps that provide instant rewards for walk-ins. Compelling the consumer to enter a store is simply an advertiser’s dream.

10. What about local businesses that don’t sell deep discount products?

Will Facebook allow accountants to provide discounted tax services? Probably. Retailers are only a small portion of the local merchant landscape. The new frontier for deals advertising lies in finding innovative and effective marketing methods for professionals, business to business services, and businesses that rely on lead generation, like real estate and auto sales.

We see a new trend in lead generation that connects buyer and seller one on one exclusively and transparently using variations of the Deals format. Most lead generation systems are based on subscription models or pay per lead that serve up leads amassed from capture sites. Consumers provide their contact information with no idea who will call them.

The new lead generation systems will provide an enticing “deal” from a specific company or business professional. More important, these deals are promoted or syndicated through appropriate channels that connect advertiser and customer. The key to the new lead gen system is functionality that allows the advertiser to transparently see who the lead is (it could be a Facebook friend already) and assess whether that lead is worth pursuing. If the lead is worthy, a fee is paid to the syndication channel where the lead was sourced. The new systems are performance based, and will contribute efficiency and far more certainty in the lead generation process in the same way the Daily Deal ensures every purchaser will be a customer for the advertiser.

The long awaited announcement of Facebook Places this afternoon sure was anticlimactic. The “Check-in” is now institutionalized, and the masses of 500,000,000+ Facebook members can now enjoy what 2 million Foursquare members have been doing. But that was what was expected; the gorilla just tossed its hat into the ring.

The main function Facebook brings to the party is ubiquity:

Ever gone to a show, only to find out afterward that your friends were there too? With Places, you can discover moments when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time. (from Facebook blog)

“Checking in” has essentially been a kind of mindless activity, but its social context makes it meaningful within a massive network, like college students.

The locational media – Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla, perhaps even Twitter – now become relegated to being the worker bees developing new applications and functionality for the check-ins Facebook will ultimately dominate, just as they are doing with “likes”. With the new Facebook Location API also being launched today, it seems natural for mobile app developers to build for the massive audience of Facebook. It’s up to the locational apps to differentiate themselves with specific functionality – Yelp has business reviews, Foursquare has branding deals with movie studios and other corporations, Groupon has local discount coupons.

The next step – watch Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla double down on efforts to build the locational commerce applications that provide rewards for check-ins. Groupon has proven the revenue model associated with couponing (Forbes claims it’s the fastest growing company ever), and it’s low hanging fruit.

Get ready for the commercial social media...

———————–

The latest Facebook metrics are powerful: 400 million active users (7% of the world), 50% of them logging on each day and spending more than 55 minutes daily on Facebook.

The sudden concentration of traffic on the social media led by Facebook has caught business by surprise. In particular, small and local businesses don’t quite realize their consumer is now spending a majority of their time on the social media, but they continue to rely on the old online standard: their website. Websites and blogs are critical as marketing collateral, but local businesses need to develop an online marketing presence that spans across the social media ubiquitously.

With all the buzz around Foursquare and Gowalla, why is hyperlocal media suddenly hot? Geolocation is changing the social media by providing nothing more than the tagging mechanism to define social networks by localities. Geolocation facilitates the development of a new, more practical, more intimate Twitter/Foursquare network of friends who just happen to be living down the street. It’s far more compelling to build a social network of folks you can have coffee with than the national networks than generally evolve in Twitter and Linkedin. I myself see this… I am starting to socialize with San Franciscans…

The Hyperlocal Marketing Opportunity

So we’re seeing social apps like Twitter and Yelp quickly adopting location “check-in” functionality, with Facebook in the wings. And this presents a huge opportunity. It’s a no-brainer for local retailers and businesses to see that they need to provide the most effective online venue for their local customers to “check-in” to. The new local “websites” are the Facebook business page, the new local advertising vehicle is the Twitter coupon, and the new reviews column is Yelp.

You haven’t seen them yet, but Facebook is primed to evolve into a massive Sunday advertising circular for local businesses:

And why not? It’s free. Enterprising local media publishers (for example, Breaking News sites) will curate and compile these merchants into local online directories.

Twitter will develop hyperlocal couponing systems that will be online equivalents of PennySaver coupons and Valpak:

And why not? It’s free. Couponing is effective because it is perceived by consumers as “found money” while straight advertising may now be considered “spammy”. You’ll see the advent of new local social media based advertising agencies that will create turnkey Twitter / Facebook / Foursquare couponing campaigns for merchants. And these campaigns will be accepted because online data is more efficient for tracking and analysis than traditional advertising channels like radio / TV or inefficient direct mail offerings like PennySaver. There is a defined ROI.

Conclusion

2009 was the year when the masses found Twitter and Facebook. 2010 will be the year when local business begins to recognize the power of leveraging Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and Foursquare et al to achieve a level of community engagement that standard “one-way message” advertising can’t achieve. It’s about being ubiquitous across the social media so your community of customers can find your services via their preferred channels – Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Related slideshow: Ubiquity marketing (Jan. 2010)

Related webinar: I’ll be discussing “The Impact of Geolocational Media” on the Virtual Bar Camp April 6 at 2:15pm, Room #4. Register and join our discussion.

The powerful launch of Google Buzz (Mashable | Google Buzz has completely changed the game) last week signals the arrival of the Real Time Web as a truly new media. It’s been well documented that Twitter has established itself a breaking news source. Google Buzz, Facebook and Twitter form a triumvirate channel for sourcing news media that will continue to grow in influence.

The real time web implies that online news will flow more and more through applications, not websites. The problem facing mainstream media is their dependence on traffic through their websites for advertising revenue.

The journalistic media on the other hand continue to try to erect walls that halt traffic flow through their websites, either by charging subscriptions (New York Newsday gets 35 subscribers after three months), by limiting access to their content by aggregators (Murdoch’s gambit with blocking Google from indexing Sky News content), or simply by not providing an RSS feed for syndication (Santa Barbara News Press and many other local publications).

Social media thrives on RSS to find, deliver and syndicate news from journalistic media, and it directs traffic back to the news source.  If the traditional news media continues to ignore social media sourced breaking news, they risk becoming irrelevant to their communities who demand this real time news. People will eventually find that real time news directly from their community via one of their social networks and news aggregation applications.

We recently experimented with broadcasting local breaking news across various social media channels including Twitter and Facebook.

This slideshow reports web traffic results that confirm in part:

1. the demand for local breaking news in a city is powerful. Everybody wants to know what is going on in real time and local publishing organs are focusing more on journalistic content over “real time Web” content.
2. breaking news for a city is easily found and followed by locals on Twitter and Facebook
3. local media properties that broadcast real time news across social media channels not only attract local traffic, but also well with search engines
4. local media properties that automatically deliver real time news grow in web traffic with little promotion

The Powerful Web Traffic Profile of Breaking News in a Community

View more presentations from Pat Kitano.

]]> http://mediatransparent.com/2010/02/09/the-powerful-web-traffic-profile-of-local-breaking-news-in-a-community/feed/ 0 http://mediatransparent.com/2009/12/13/media-predictions-for-2010/ http://mediatransparent.com/2009/12/13/media-predictions-for-2010/#comments Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:54:52 +0000 Pat Kitano http://mediatransparent.com/?p=792 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } 1) Community Engagement will become the Driver of Local Media Local news used to be the province of the local newspapers, radio stations and TV. It’s become clear consumers will digest local news online as newspapers shut down, and on the Internet, all media are equal – TV, radio and print websites compete for the [...]]]> #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; }

1) Community Engagement will become the Driver of Local Media

Local news used to be the province of the local newspapers, radio stations and TV. It’s become clear consumers will digest local news online as newspapers shut down, and on the Internet, all media are equal – TV, radio and print websites compete for the same eyeballs. A swelter of recent big media portal deals – for example, MSN/NBCU/Hearst,  to cover local news threatens local media institutions through sheer size and scale. Curatorial portals – Huffington Post’s local editions and Outside.in (with investment from CNN among others to support content development for CNN Local editions) will aggregate the news, and local reporter infrastructure will be nurtured at citizen journalist engines like Examiner.com or AOL’s Seed.

Here’s the problem: local is local. Media portals need to figure out how to engage the community at a grass roots level so they have drivers and participants pushing the conversations and attracting their peers.  Portals believe they can scale and develop the website traffic required to support a local advertisement model. However, communities may develop their own home grown commercial systems for the same reasons why “buy local” is becoming a mantra; and the portals aren’t entitling ownership of their local media systems to the community. For that reason, a community may rather spend its local advertising dollars with an on-the-ground local publisher like Minnpost or OaklandLocal, or even a Chamber of Commerce sponsored local media resource than CNN Local.

2) Mobile + Local advertising = Penny Saver 2.0

The first local advertising and search media are starting to emerge: Postabon facilitates the broadcast of local discounts and coupon offers and Milo searches for specific products at the large chains like the neighborhood Best Buy by accessing the store’s inventory database. Expect popular geotagging applications like FourSquare and Gowalla to integrate local coupons and product search. These coupons are not perceived as advertisements. If they save you money, they are called “unexpected cash”.

These systems help solve the consumer impulse buy decision (“I’m shopping at the mall tomorrow, what stores are having sales?”). Traditional search engines haven’t been able to answer these temporal questions down to the local level (try querying Google to find a snowboard sale in your town this weekend).

Related: Examples of Twitter hyperlocal advertising models

3) Mobile + Advertising + Pubsubhubbub = Alert systems

The real time web is pushing business society into a new value paradigm that rewards those who can react instantly and systematically to opportunities. A concept not unlike Wall Street program trading, these new systems work on alerts that ping users for decisions. Mobile devices eventually won’t need “refreshes” to alert; they are always on and by extension, almost coerce its owner to be “always on”.

For consumers, marketing companies like Local Thunder will connect merchants with their community through rich media content development and RSS feeds for alerts. Google’s Pubsubhubbub essentially deploys RSS feed data in real time so alerts can be time and location targeted.

We start getting into Augmented Reality / Minority Report territory when coupon alerts popup as one walks by a store, but some company will make this real time location based alert system a reality, if not a hit, by the end of 2010.

4) Advertising as Content

Infomercials got it right; advertising as content engages customers at the story telling level. And the content may be ridiculous:

new ad from the California Milk Board

Today’s business can no longer resort to trite marketing, and say “buy from me because I’m honest… high touch… lower priced… give great service” with a straight face any more. It now comes off as, well, an advertisement.

Advertisements used to be crafted to lead into the “call to action”. In 1960′s Madison Avenue’s ideal world, consumers would make the purchase decision based on the facts presented in the ad or by the incessant aggregate impressions made in what has always been called “branding”.  In the fuzzy world of social media marketing, where is the call to action?

5) Everybody becomes a marketer, and some will become sales closers

The call to action still originates from consumer need. A call to action may simply be an attractive price, but in many circumstances, the transaction close is facilitated by a personal sales pitch or a referral. As advertising becomes content driven, the combined testimonials for a product or service become far more persuasive to support the call to purchase. Testimonials and ratings of local services (like the current standards  Yelp.com and Citysearch) will be built into every local media resource (see Postabon‘s rating system). In fact, Yelp has elevated the standard so that the 5-star review is becoming the minimum parsing criteria for real estate agents because so many have this grade.

Bad, or even 4 star reviews are now potential disqualifiers

So how can somebody profit from providing testimonials and otherwise supporting the marketing efforts of others around them? Locals will do the same things they did pre-Internet with their Chambers, Lion’s Clubs and networking groups – support each other. New social media – enabled referral systems will be built out locally through Facebook and LinkedIn groups, and through the new local ad applications.

The bigger trend will be the development of local affiliate marketing systems that compensate referrals. Think of websites that have an Amazon affiliate widget or link that compensate owners if their users go through the widget to buy Amazon stuff. Companies will provide applications to build local merchant guides for use by other local business websites to create networks of affiliated services. And local affiliate marketing systems is only a start; affiliate marketing programs extend sales forces without adding overhead, and we’ll start seeing mainstream adoption by enterprises developing strategic partnership programs.

Related: The essence of affiliate marketing

5)a) Everybody can become a traveling sales person

Anybody can become a virtual mobile storefront using the upcoming Square, a secure, simple to use iPhone application with a credit card reader that allows anybody to become a street merchant. Point-of-sale becomes redefined when anybody can potentially sell anything anywhere.

6) Virtual socializing and Webinar ubiquity

Webinars are social media too. They are already changing the landscape on how people meet for business on the cheap, and worry the airlines.

2009 British Airways face-to-face campaign

Current webinar systems like Webex are still too difficult to use. Within 2010, some company will develop a simple to launch, one-click web meeting system that can broadcast live discussions across ad hoc participant groups. Call the concept adhoc webinars. Why will this work? Webinars can become venues like happy hours where groups can meet and share. The key is ease of use, anybody should be able to participate so weekly scheduled meetings can expand as more people know about them. Imagine Robert Scoble producing a one-click webinar party every Friday afternoon to discuss ideas – he would essentially have an interactive TV program that can be produced on the fly without studios and cameras.

Virtual socializing is the natural evolution to social networking because it’s location independent. One example in the real estate world are the virtual REBarCamps that aggregate speakers and audience together in a virtual national conference.

7) The grass roots Web

Website and application development should be simple enough for normal folks who know nada about code, but still want to custom develop a clean, workable application by themselves without hiring tech talent. The ascendance of plug/play blogs and WordPress themes and plug-ins, and Ning based social network applications facilitate the quick building of applications by non-techies. Add in automated features like Facebook Connect, Twitter Lists, Posterous posting, and the latest mini-applications that provide snippets of value to the website, and website development is becoming accessible and experimental to the masses. However, I’m frankly surprised there isn’t more activity to provide simple plug/play applications to individuals and SMEs… will 2010 be the year?

Speaking of websites, the next great media company won’t have a website (h/t Steve Rubel).

Related: How to build a community media resource

8 ) The stream is more important than website

Anybody immersed in the social media already knows this. The content stream constitutes a conversation, and can be perceived as far more “real” than a calculated marketing-focused website presentation. The same new paradigm that makes an advertisement seem  promotional applies to websites. Yes, conversations can happen on websites but there are likely many more occurring on Twitter, Yelp, Facebook and other blogs that are deemed more credible because they are third party commentary.

fr. Fast Company http://bit.ly/5bRTxL

AshtonKutcher.com the website does not exist. He is a Twitter celebrity whose breakthrough social media credential was challenging @CNNBRK to a 1,000,000 follower contest. Media presence isn’t just website traffic, it’s providing value to the readership through new media channels… which leads us to the reason why anybody can now become a media resource, if not a media star:

9) Curation is the new syndication

Mass media used to rule syndication, now anybody can curate and present content across a panoply of social media platforms. Curating breaking news is key to readership – it’s the reason why people follow CNN, Marketwatch or engadget. Twitter has distinguished itself as the forefront application for breaking news, and anybody can use Twitter Lists to curate Twitter feeds by topic, geography and industry. Curation tools, like Outside.in Publisher for hyperlocal news, are being developed for local content publishers.

Curators are the new news editors, and the window is open to create new media properties. Curated local media will be a focus because there’s a media void that both national media and independent journalistic efforts are now trying to fill (see #1 above).

Related:

Hyperlocal curation of real time news

Build a dynamic community media resource on Twitter in one hour

10) A new era of open social media (the adjective “social” will soon be redundant)

Facebook and LinkedIn are closed networks simply because they require confirmation of “friend” status. Frankly, it’s just too much manual clicking to accept a lot of friends. Twitter has distinguished itself as an open network that can amass networks of millions of followers, and is the application closest to a personal broadcast media. Facebook certainly sees the power of massive networks (being the biggest one itself), and in order to compete with Twitter’s broadcast power, will unveil similar broadcast functionality. Simply put, in 2010 Facebook will create an opt-in setting that allows users to open their status updates to anybody who wants to follow them. Becoming a Facebook Fan today is similar but statuses can’t be filtered within the main feed. Once 350+ million Facebook broadcast systems are potentially unleashed, they can be curated categorically like Twitter Lists and conversations more conveniently filtered. Yes, Facebook already has Friendfeed as the model, but it needs to be simpler to use, and will likely cede to a new Facebook open network product.

LinkedIn can open itself up the same way. Since LinkedIn is a more industrial network, value would be derived from curated lists developed by users based on industry or discipline. Although LinkedIn Groups encourages industry conversations, they are generally sparse and hard to follow if one has joined many Groups.

Once networks open up, conversations become even more multi-channel than they are today. A Tweet that gets syndicated across Facebook, LinkedIn, and other networks will provoke dialogues characteristic of each network. Clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic see this coming and have integrated multi-channel monitoring systems. In the latter part of 2010, evolved versions of Google Wave and the Google OS, and possibly Facebook, will provide the same multi-channel operability integrated into their offering.

Related: Check my 2009 predictions for social media last year.

]]> http://mediatransparent.com/2009/12/13/media-predictions-for-2010/feed/ 23 http://mediatransparent.com/2009/07/05/community-2-0-media-is-limited-but-evolving/ http://mediatransparent.com/2009/07/05/community-2-0-media-is-limited-but-evolving/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:40:37 +0000 Pat Kitano http://mediatransparent.com/?p=453 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } Community media exists today in its traditional formats of local TV, radio and newspapers. Almost anybody can attest to the reality that most local news and events coverage still happen through these traditional media. Community 2.0 media, where the community itself participates in local conversation, is evolving through several specific, established online channels: Online newspapers [...]]]> #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; }

Community media exists today in its traditional formats of local TV, radio and newspapers. Almost anybody can attest to the reality that most local news and events coverage still happen through these traditional media.

Community 2.0 media, where the community itself participates in local conversation, is evolving through several specific, established online channels:

• Online newspapers provide venues for community commentary on local news

• Craigslist and Yelp provide ad hoc community bulletin boards

What’s surprising is that the above venues are the only “local” websites with significant community participation. (Try thinking of any others…)

The above means of community interaction relies on the local user to post directly onto the site. Thus, conversations are much harder to find and track in real time because the commentary remains buried inside the website, whether it’s the online newspaper or Craigslist.

The local conversation is most engaging when it is distributed

The community bulletin board should be opened up into the social media. For example, local Yelp (or Yahoo!) reviews connects with Facebook and Friendfeed:

Local conversations can also be hashtagged for distribution via Twitter and through local Twitter feed aggregation sites like Breaking SF News.com:

Conclusion: Local conversations are oriented to real time because every participant is a part of a real life community. Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and other real time social media applications will be the most efficient way to broadcast running dialogues, even conferences, within the community. Community media systems, structured like the Breaking News Network or adhoc in local Facebook groups, will evolve to capture these conversations.

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