Fragmentation of Directories on Handhelds...How Many Apps Does it Take?

I’ve been delving into local search applications that have been specifically designed for iPhones and have been struck not only by the sleek designs of the apps but also by the micro view they offer on how the directory business in general has been unfolding. Directories have moved from traditional rigid category-based search experiences to sleeker search sites and have recently moved heavily into vertical directories incorporating user generated content and other social media.

On the traditional side of the spectrum are tools that act as pocket yellow pages. AT&T is a good example of this type of application.


Launched by Avantar, a sister company to Yellow Pages Directory, the app has a number of features including:

• Auto location detection
• Map & Directions
• One tap location modifier
• A contacts area to “bookmark” businesses
• Tap to call

Firmly rooted in the tradition of the directory user experience, the consumer is still faced with fields to fill. Granted, the bolder tap opportunities make the experience a bit easier but for some reason it still feels like the search experience of old.

Remember the first time you held an iPod? Do you recall the slight confusion surrounding the wheel? How long did it take before you realized “wow, this is a better way”? Well, the newer generation of applications is all about this shift in navigation.

One example of this can be seen with the Where To application. Where To is owned by German based FutureTap and while it is based on the same data exchange as any other directory, the app’s unique proposition is a sleeker, more intuitive user experience. It's currently powered by Google Maps but is moving towards enhanced listing data. So the difference between this offering and that of the traditional yellow pages offering is this:


• Find whatever you want without any typing

Finally, I’ve been watching the vertical directory frenzy manifest itself at the app mall. Applications are popping up that specialize in finding anything from Doctors to Burger Kings. Admittedly, I’ve asked myself (more than twice) if these applications have any future. Do consumers want multiple applications on their handhelds to find products and services that were once contained in one access point?


One vertical that seems to be experiencing significant lift here is the travel/restaurant business. Free apps like UrbanSpoon, Local Picks and Yelp are developing some attention. Even the pricey ($29.99) Zagat app seems to be gaining some users.

In the local mobile landscape the obvious user behavior will always win and the categories of growth will undoubtedly reflect these behaviors. I’m not saying that vertical apps don’t have a place in app land but doesn’t it make more sense for consumers to use one app that streams specialized data from the verticals into one access point?

To finish the analogy between traditional yellow pages and their evolved apps, independent publishers started producing competing books and delivering them to consumers. In some areas across North America, consumers have to chose between more than two yellow pages books!

When surfing randomly through reviews of applications (all applications including games and gadgets), the reoccurring theme on a negative review is "don't waste the space...". I think the app mall is starting to fill up with fragments of utility that users may find interesting for one fleeting search...

There you are then...Location Based Social Networking - Brightkite

This week I took some time to explore location based social networking and as Brightkite just got out of beta last week, I thought it would be a great place to start.

I had a nice chat with Brightkite's founder Brady Becker. Prior to launching the social network, Brady was the Senior Designer at Local Matters, a company that provides yellow pages and local publishers with media technology platforms to deploy and scale local directories and specialized portals. Brady’s insight into the local media opportunity and the explosion of social media inspired him to create Brightkite.

Launched in beta April 2008, Brightkite is a location-based social network that works on a variety of different platforms including the web, mobile web and several GPS devices. By “checking in”, users can reveal their location to their network of friends (at varying levels of granularity from country to city to actual address). Web 2.0 tools allow users to annotate places with notes and photos viewed across the network.




Here are some applicable scenarios for the service:

• At a conference or other event that draws crowds with common interests, users can connect with one another in real life by “checking-in” to the location.
• Discussions that are tied to an event or place can be shared centrally through a specific location feed (think Twitter) providing a real time record of discussion surrounding the event. In some cases the feeds are displayed on large screens.
• Friends can coordinate meetings based on relative physical distances.

The service targets the 18-35 demographic and Brady is pleased with the uptake (sorry - no numbers) on users that are willing to reveal their location. Eventually, the auto-reveal function will become an option but Brady stressed the importance of privacy and control as a priority and feels that this may take some time to unfold.

Brightkite’s business model has two core components:

• Location-based/behavior based advertising - allowing advertisers to reach audiences based on varying levels of granularity.
• Place analysis and targeted marketing - provides investors and marketers with valuable research about locations (even intersections) and the people that frequent them

Brightkite received about $1 mil in angel funding in February 2008 and the company opened its doors to the public in early December 2008.

The service is available globally.

A couple of thoughts on challenges & opportunities:

There's been a lot of movement in the event space. It seems like a quite gold rush to get to the brilliant combination of time/place/profile advertising. We've seen some great presentations from companies like Zvents and Centerd as they move the needle on innovation across platforms.

Critical Mass is my biggest area of concern for Brightkite. The entire business model is based on delivering volumes of clustered people to advertisers or research hungry investors and marketers. The company will have to work hard to develop high impact event opportunities to gain visibility and drive users.

Privacy is being addressed by the company but when users reveal location to a network there is always risk. Without having studied the security measures behind the platform, it’s hard to tell whether the networks can or might be compromised. We've seen in other social networks that many users don't hold back on providing details. Address sharing takes public disclosure to a whole new level.

If the company can prove its worth by delivering some great case studies at a wide variety of events, the opportunity for acquisition by one of the larger networks would certainly exist.

I really like the research piece of the business. Again, seriously assuming that they reach critical mass (or get acquired by someone who provides this), they would be able to provide investors, marketers and business owners extremely valuable data about consumers as they move offline tied to behavior and time.

The business is thought provoking and I’m looking forward to seeing how it unfolds…

Local Media - Online Measurement & Tracking…Notes from ILM ‘08

Delving deeper into my notes from last week’s Kelsey conference, for this post I thought I’d focus on measurement and tracking. While there were a lot of presentations that touched on the subject, I found Kelsey's "State of Interactive Local Media 4Q 2008" covered the most ground on the topic.

Matt Booth gave an interesting presentation on SMB perceptions and influences when it comes to their media activity. It’s clear that although media measurement tools have never been more accessible, small business owners continue to rely on good old-fashioned gut measurements. 91% still track by asking customers how they were referred.


The problem with asking how customers were referred is the gaping hole in funnel activity that is missed through the one-word answers. Search may have started the process but IYP may have closed the deal. Likewise, a view through from a social network may have caused a search. Sadly, the SMBs are slow to adopt true measurement into their media activity and this is clouding the perception of media effectiveness.

The revelation on gut measurements deepened with another compelling point during the presentation where Booth discussed the impact that instant gratification has on the SMB’s perception of effectiveness. Booth pointed to the following chart that shows how the lag time in media going live and results captured directly impacts the perception of the channel’s effectiveness.

I believe that there’s a recency factor that comes into play here as well. When the SMBs who are not using any measurement tools are surveyed to rank effectiveness, they may recall their most recent successes and skew the numbers in their favour.

So, it’s no wonder that when you look at the SMB’s perception on which media is driving a return on investment, those with the longest (perceived) wait time for response are ranked poorly. This is yet another reason why small businesses are not as keen on display advertising as national brands. The latency effect is lost on them and the idea of a longer-term investment on media is irrelevant. I'm (pipe) dreaming that this will change with tools and education from the media publishers to help boost value in a world of stretched inventory...


Finally, Booth closed with a lecture on Solomon Asch’s findings on a conformity experiment conducted in the 1950’s. Basically, the study showed that in groups, individuals will conform with others’ decisions even when there is hard evidence to indicate flawed judgment.

Applying the Asch principle to the SMB, Booth showed that despite the fact that 31% of small business owners claim that actual media performance will dictate spend, in reality, the majority of them will be influenced through social outlets instead (57%).

Last year I blogged about the habits of small business owners and how they are actually consumers before they are business owners. In October I covered the SMB market and shared that according to Warrillow & Co., 52% of SMBs are active participants in social networking sites (although most of them do not use them as business platforms...yet). This reiterates the untapped potential of using social media as a marketing platform to reach attractive influencers in the SMB market.

In summary, SMBs are not tracking their media effectively and there’s a great opportunity for them to do so in a way that speaks to their clear need for instant gratification and their obvious habits that lean towards (social) interaction. I’m thinking communication based tracking that goes beyond a dashboard and actually lives with the SMB outside of a login environment.

Tracking has always been hot in online media at the national level. It’s time to wrap it up and serve it attractively to the local channel so that we can all get a clearer picture on what’s working. The fact is that they want to be measuring performance but they continue to roll the dice by relying on their gut to make media investments.

Transcontinental's Local Play...Weblocal.ca

Weblocal.ca launched last week in Canada as a new local search engine competing at a national level. The site was launched by Transcontinental Media. Transcontinental is Canada’s largest printer, one of the country’s leading publishers of consumer magazines and second-largest community newspaper publisher. The company has a history of offering its clients integrated media solutions including direct marketing, a diverse digital media network and a door-to-door advertising material distribution network.

The Transcontinental initiative breathes some new life into the Canadian local media landscape as it mobilizes its 400 local sales people to focus on their new local search engine. Weblocal.ca is also leveraging their 125 strong community newspaper business as a marketing platform to reach small businesses across Canada as well as the 4.5 million unique visitors per month they reach through their consumer magazine network.

Naturally curious, I asked Andrei Uglar, Weblocal.ca’s General Manager some questions about the site and how he plans to cut through the tough Canadian market.

Following are some highlights from the discussion on how Weblocal.ca is attempting to differentiate itself (with my notes of course):

• Andrei cited the feet on the street as the number one competitive advantage over similar sites in Canada. (cool)
• The site has implemented social networking from launch where users are able to create “neighbours” in order to swap favourite listing information at the local level. (very cool)
• Professional services are provided to advertisers when they subscribe to the directory. (standard and quite effective for a number of reasons)
• A strong focus on SEO is where Andrei feels the site will captivate market share. Through a tagging strategy, they’re allowing advertisers to create better opportunities to be found. (standard but have seen it fail)
• Wiki listings - allowing businesses to correct their information and add new data. (will need moderation)
• Leveraging their offline media properties to promote the site amongst consumers. This includes a broad range of magazines as well as their regional and local newspapers. (very cool)
• Reviews will come from three sources - users, crawled aggregation and relevant editorial (where available) added to the business profiles. (quite cool)
• Easy Pricing - $199 subscription fee + $89 per month period. (solid)
  

I think one of the strongest advantages next to its sales force and cross-promotional opportunities will be funding. Transcontinental reported $2.3 billion in revenue last year and digital is high on the agenda.

A couple of rough patches to watch out for in their first year:

• Their tagging strategy and how it will impact the user experience. I blogged about this issue last year and I still believe it can kill a site.
• The wiki-dependence to correct, enhance and add new listings. This will need some serious moderating.
• Launching with rich fields but flat data...The silence in non-populated listings is deafening and users are fickle. Sometimes it makes sense to hold some of the cards back so that population strategies can be implemented.
• Rate of adoption as yet another social network-type site.

Listening to their roll out strategy, I think they've got a fair shot at the market. Their plans for procurement seem solid and I do believe they'll settle into the space one way or another.

Andrei and his team are in for a wild ride - as the saying goes..."the more the merrier".

Side Note

One reoccurring theme in the local space in Canada is that no one (aside from YPG) seems to have the whole country nailed down. It seems that there's always a focus on Quebec and Ontario but very little coverage across the other provinces. There's a great opportunity to connect the dots in this country but it seems to be taking a while...

Putting Money in the Meter…Microsoft CashBack

I’ve had a chance to think a little bit about the discussions this week on the “Future of Search” panel and truthfully, I’m a bit confused.

I’ve decided to reflect on Microsoft's presentation because I have been patiently waiting for internal feedback on the consumer search incentive program they launched this spring. Martin Stoddart, Senior Product Manager of Microsoft Live Search gave quite an optimistic view on Microsoft’s future in the search game earlier this week at IAB MIXX and I’d like to share some of his thoughts on how Microsoft plans to slay the dragon (disguised in librarian clothing).

Stoddart’s view is that disruptive forces are at work pushing the search product to a new level (phase 3) that is geared towards the more experienced search consumer demands for enhanced results (rich semantics for example), paid engagement & rewards.


Honing in on the disruption, Stoddart described Microsoft’s consumer reward system as a much more attractive and advanced business model than the “aging” cost per click method. In May 2008, there was a big roll out of the CashBack program and Stoddart highlighted the model as a success. Although he didn’t share numbers on the program which is currently only available in the US, he sounded pretty convinced about the direction things were going.

Here’s where (my) confusion sets in…

Essentially, Microsoft has created an enormous consumer affiliate program to encourage searches on its platform and in doing so, has created somewhat of a closed market environment where users will get cash back or discounts on purchases made from Microsoft merchants.

So I’ve stumbled hard on the oxymoron of “enhanced results, rich semantic search etc.” and the proposed closed search (commercial) environment. How can your search be rich and closed at the same time? It feels a bit like AOL circa 1995 no?

In theory, affiliate programs can be successful at capturing market share but with the growing trend of consumers demanding transparency, mobility and freedom to select from infinite online options, the thought of receiving rewards for a finite list of merchants seems archaic and somehow (for lack of a better term) uncool.

Martin went on to describe some of the features that were in development at Microsoft. All of them made a lot of sense and it’s true that Microsoft has all the assets to string together the laundry list of enhancements required to compete over the next few years.

I guess my question is whether paying consumers to come to a relatively closed environment will hold down the fort while Microsoft works on developing the items that are required to deliver rich results to the users of the future. By holding down the fort I mean: drive loyalty, maintain its already battered market share or optimistically, steal from the dragon’s lair. In a way it feels like the company is putting money in the meter while it dashes around internally to come up with the phase 3 experience.

I'll dig around the media buying side over the next few weeks to see where the media budget votes are on this one.

Items on the development list included:

Experience

• Best of search and browse
• Intent-based refinements
• 1 click simplicity
• Immersive verticals

Intelligence

• Opinion Index to expose the wisdom of the crowds
• Predictive Pricing
• Query Suggestions
• Comparison tools
• Traffic aware routing

Multi-Device Access

• Mobile Product Search
• Turn-by-turn Directions
• Gas Prices
• Movies

It's a tall order for anyone.

The Vertical Advantage...Know What I Mean?

Over the past few months I’ve had a chance to work in the local media planning trenches. It’s been a real eye-opener to business models in the local landscape and one of the benefits has been exposure to the “feet on the street” and the role they play throughout the media planning and buying experience.

Working as an agent allows you to delve deeply into a business sector while representing the company’s media spend. In booking across various business verticals within a multitude of directories/engines, there have been some highlights (as well as bleaker realizations).

Here are just a few…

• There is a major variance in sales service across the publishers. This includes differences in self-procurement, sales contact and follow-up techniques.

• User experiences across the landscape leave much to be desired. Some sites with the most visually appealing content suffer from poor navigation, glaring typos, horrible grammar or confusing messages.

• As new players gun for share in a difficult marketplace, the challenge remains one of positioning the property as a viable advertising platform while generating users to sustain client bases. Marketing budgets only stretch so far, making the right decision on budget allocations is essential to survive.

• Vertical directories, by the nature of their focused content, have great potential to succeed.

Focusing on the last point, vertical directories have an advantage over broader based directories in that they have extremely focused operations. They tend to have been founded by industry members. These members bring a wealth of talent to the table. A deep understanding of a vertical is key to targeting advertisers through personal contacts and industry event networking. From a selling perspective, the ability to speak the same language as your buyer is priceless.

Industry language goes deeper than just lingo like skids, plates or seats. Each sector has its own business owner profile. Profile variances run anywhere from attire and level of professionalism to hard factors like seasonality and peek business day hours.

In the buying seat, being approached by someone close to the industry goes many miles beyond a homogeneous sales representative. They come at the right time, say the right things and most importantly have customized products that simply make sense to the business owner. One of my favourite added features is the business-to-business angle.

Splitting into verticals may not be feasible under all circumstances but for publishers that have a sustainable mass directory working the front lines (granted, not everyone has that luxury), there is time to develop deep content with industry specific customized features. The challenge is in bottling the winning model vertically while not making the mistake of hastily cutting and pasting across various sectors and renaming – that would just be silly.

Online Revenue Sneaks in Stability for Newspapers in Canada

A release from the Canadian Newspaper Association (CNA) today indicated some stability in advertising revenues.

“Total 2007 revenues for Canadian newspapers, including online operations, were marginally lower (-0.8%) dipping to $3.576 billion, the CNA reported. The slightly sharper decline in print advertising (-2.4%) was offset by vigorous growth in online revenues (+29%). Circulation sales were also down slightly, to $808.9 million, a drop of 1.2% over 2006, a year in which circulation sales posted a 3.8% gain.”

While the numbers represent a positive outlook for the publishers (there's time), the 29% increase in online ad revenue and its marginal impact on offsetting the decline in print revenue might signal the industry’s ongoing struggle to appropriately monetize the media channel.

Luckily, interactive local media is still in its early stages in Canada and so, the potential to further offset the “gentle” decline brings hope. Strategies are a foot and we’ll see a lot of strength coming from the online print networks once they’ve got their ducks in a row.

The release went on to make a salient point for online media planning/buying agencies. Over the past two years, there have been many tales of gloom and doom south of the border for the newspapers. Proximity and blurred media sources can easily influence a media planner’s decision and this is an example of why geographically specific research is so important.

The US Story...

“…total print advertising revenues in 2007 fell 9.4% to $42 billion, according to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), the biggest year-over-year decline since 1950, when the NAA first began charting the numbers. The NAA said online revenue growth softened substantially, increasing by only 18.8% in 2007 (compared to 31.4% in 2006), ten points lower than the rate of growth in Canada in the same year.”

I believe that the newspapers have tremendous potential to mobilize their content and build out their online communities. In the meantime, one truth remains - fragmented media consumption calls for fragmented media planning.

Co-op Advertising – The Local SEO Link

I’ve been spending some time on the local search side of things over the past few weeks. There have been some interesting discussions about the use of Co-op advertising or, as some would suggest, the under utilization of it.

Co-op Advertising also known as Co-op ads or Cooperative programs is defined as ad costs divided between two or more companies. Generally, the programs are born out of incentives offered by manufacturers to distributors or retailers in order to encourage promotion and advertising of particular products.

In discussions with local business owners, their awareness of programs is minimal. While they understand the general concept, they are generally not well informed about the opportunities presented by their suppliers and are therefore, missing out on hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of advertising. In some cases, the manufacturers have not taken advantage of their channels to build their brands online.

Brand advertising at the local level is still in its infancy but the potential is enormous. Currently the largest movement is coming from retail based search engines like Krillion but Local Search sites like YellowPages.ca have understood the value of brand association at the local level for some time and have built their systems accordingly.

Taking advantage of Co-op programs could help to drive SEO programs for local businesses as they broaden their searchable content through the products they may carry.

The win-win of these types of programs is clear. The manufacturers drill down to the local level while the small businesses broaden their search results for minimal cost.

The challenge to date has been the communication barriers to the local businesses as well as the amount of time required to study the programs, follow the guidelines and seek out the proper channels.

In this day and age, it would be prudent to mobilize the local troops to boost brand presence across the local media landscape. There are so many opportunities for publishers as well as small businesses in this space. I’ll be researching this much closer over the next little while. Drop me a line if you have input or are interested in the output…

SpotRunner Acquires Weblistic and gets a Sales & Planning Pipe

Los Angeles based Spot Runner, an innovative ad agency that is focused on making it easy and affordable for local businesses to advertise on TV announced its acquisition of the rapidly expanding local media agency, Weblistic today.

Freemont, CA based Weblistic has been around since the late 90’s when they developed the original technology behind YellowPages.com. Weblistic was formed as an agency to deliver cost-effective leads to local businesses. Services include SEM, SEO, distribution & online directory management and now quite clearly, online video production. The company has offices in Freemont, San Diego, New York and Vancouver.

SpotRunner was originally funded by Battery Ventures and Index Ventures but these two companies are joined by two of the world's largest advertising and marketing services companies, WPP and Interpublic Group, along with one the country's largest mass media companies, CBS Corporation. Together, these powerhouse names are backing Spot Runner's mission and vision as a company.

In January, the company shored up its national talent pool when it bought up GlobeShooter, a network of over 1,200 independent filmmakers, professional videographers, photographers, producers and production companies around the US.

On the media planning and client relations side, the acquisition of Weblistic will give SpotRunner an effective sales and strategy channel to leverage. Weblistic gets a broader client base out of the deal as SpotRunner has a large network spanning North America.

Simplifying the purchase of localized television was a tremendous step forward in the world of local media. The missing link was the ability to bundle it effectively into a comprehensive service offering. Weblistic brings the one-stop shop approach to the local business owner.

The move by SpotRunner was in my view simply smart.

Monetization of User Generated Video

I caught up with Kevin Barwin yesterday. Kevin is the Vice President of Business Development at Overlay.tv.

The Ottawa based company is getting ready to launch a technology that I think, will have great impact on enabling individuals and publishers to leverage user generated content and boost affiliate marketing networks.

As suggested by its name, Overlay.tv is a solution that allows users to create hot spots on their videos and photos. The hot spots are visible when users interact with the video or photo content and link back to anything from personal profile pages on Facebook to transactional sites like Amazon, iTunes or Expedia.


The solution is also targeted commercially, allowing larger publishers to hot spot their content and create new revenue streams.

Past attempts to monetize video content fell short in delivering targeted content and in truly integrating with the content. Players like Adap.tv largely use contextual ad serving via tagging as a marker for video content and ads tend to appear at the bottom of the screen. Kevin pointed out that the contextual gaps have led to some disconnects like videos about scuba diving leading to pet foods stores. While Overlay.tv’s technology will ultimately be at the mercy of its users (contextually speaking), it will have far greater potential to put accurately targeted buyers and sellers together.

Overlay.tv will officially launch on February 14 with over 750 affiliates for users to choose from. The company just announced it's completion of a $4.6 million Series A financing round.

Here’s a detailed walk through from a user perspective:

• Avid scuba diver blogs about diving and has hundreds of connections online based on this affinity.
• Scuba diver uploads video from Belize to show off the sea horse spotted in the coral.
• Diver creates an overlay and begins to hotspot items on the video (snorkel, swimsuit, location)
• Diver self selects from a library of affiliates in creating the overlay. Let’s say Expedia for location.
• Viewers scroll over the items and are able to get deeper information or purchase opportunities of the hot spotted items.
• Diver generates revenue from lead to Expedia and shares revenue with Overlay.tv

On the publisher side, Overlay.tv will be white labeling its product and aside from fees generated through customization services, it will be creating revenue sharing opportunities across major media properties.

Thoughts/Challenges/Opportunities

Adoption
Time will tell if consumers will adopt the monetization of their content using this type of solution.

Affiliate Marketing
Its proper execution will have a tremendous impact on boosting affiliate marketing networks through social media.

Saturation/Best Practices
Learning from Facebook’s nutty Vampire scenario, Overlay.tv will have to monitor feedback on user experience and audience reaction. It will definitely need optimizing to insure content is not compromised. Best practices will need to be shared across its network of users.

Offline Lead Generation
Inserting a layer of sophistication for couponing and Voip could give Overlay.tv and other players in this space potential to generate measurable (monetized) leads efficiently offline through video.

Local Search
This could create a whole new aspect to local media and how local retailers might employ the use of video within their local search listings. The flexibility offered by the product creates an opening for businesses that traditionally, may not have found much value in video ads.

Online Video Advertising Stats

• In November 2006 (predating the social networking mania), eMarketer predicted that by 2010, the online video advertising expenditure would become a $3 billion industry.
• Here's a great piece from Mark Hopkins at Mashable covering a Burst Media study on the subject of consumers and their interaction with online video.

In closing... Happy Valentine's Day Amazon!!!

How Social Networks Compete with Search...Mitsubishi Case Study

Based on the premise that search marketing is so popular because users are highly qualified due to their specified searches and the results they are exposed to, it occurs to me that access to the social graph expands this notion effectively with the added benefit of brand exposure.

Last night at Facebook Camp, there was a compelling Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution case study delivered by Andrew Cherwenka, Vice President of Business Development at Toronto based Trapeze Media.

Campaign Objectives

• Generate brand exposure beyond that of Mitsubishi’s initial attempt through a stand alone micro-site.
  
• Sell cars
  

Target Intelligence

• 28 year old Canadian males
• High demographic composition currently on Flickr, YouTube and Facebook

Solution

• Campaign headline on the Home Page of Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution microsite “Watch it on YouTube, Befriend it on Facebook, See it on Flickr" with direct links to YouTube, Facebook and Flickr
  
• Creation of a fan page within Facebook (among other initiatives involving Flickr & YouTube)
  

Results (Facebook Portion)

• Within 3 weeks, the page generated:
• 1,199 fans
• 152 wall posts
• 12,473 video views to the Mitsubishi Lancer microsite
  
• 17,384 page views to the Mitsubishi Lancer microsite
• CPC $0.23

Based on the results (to date) of this campaign, one could argue that the effectiveness of the social graph far surpasses that of a traditional SEM campaign. In one of the most competitive categories (automotive), a $0.23 CPC at this volume and speed is hard to come by on the search engines.

The added layer of value is the engagement this type of execution is able to afford the advertiser.

Someone in the audience asked if the strategy was criticized for creating a “fan” page, which would imply that the campaign is not directed at acquisitions but rather, an existing base of loyal consumers. The response of course was that through accessing the social graph, Mitsubishi was able to pick up some influencers. It only takes one car enthusiast who belongs to several car talk groups to infect the masses he is associated with in that particular niche. So, not only is there reach, but also there is targeted reach, which in turn, creates highly desirable chatter content.

Search delivers targeted audiences, of this we as strategists are certain, but as witnessed in the Mitsubishi case study, the social graph delivers invaluable brand exposure opportunities. Andrew pointed out that the biggest value is in the tremendous amount of impressions delivered on profiles and newsfeeds across Mitsubishi's target market's social graph.

Local search from a decentralized (franchisee or dealer networks) come into play when the franchises and dealers leverage corporate initiatives such as these.

Ok, one last pot shot at search from this perspective.... Through the thick transparency, I can't seem to find any click fraud issues?

Reviews with a LouderVoice

Writing to you live from my reviews and reputation management rabbit hole... I had an interesting exchange with Conor O’Neill today. Conor is the Co-Director of Argolon Solutions' new venture, LouderVoice.

The Irish based company launched in May 2007 with a platform that allows its members to write reviews on their own blogs, so that they can be aggregated and distributed to partners. A secondary part of the business allows blogless reviewers to set up a LouderVoice reviews blog on their network with the option to transfer to alternative servers as desired.

The driving factor behind the platform is to build a trusted community and Conor feels that reviews that are tied back to personal blogs providing deeper background on the person behind the words, is much more transparent.

With its growing collection of detailed, user generated content, LouderVoice is offering a platform for rants, raves and indifferent expressions from consumers. As a result f the content-rich collection, Conor pointed out that more and more of their users' reviews are topping Google in SEO. By building out identities specific to reviewing products and services, the play stays true to its content. As an added feature, the site allows reviewers to push content on the go via SMS.

To date, Conor describes the content as seasonally driven. With a lot of music and movie reviews reflecting the winter habits of hibernating consumers. Restaurant and hotel reviews tend to pop up in the summer. "The main thing we see is long tail content with plenty of completely unique reviews that are not seen anywhere else and a lot of local content" added Conor.

Developed through Microformats, the LouderVoice functionality is a simple add-on to an existing blog.

An API is currently under development to allow LouderVoice partners to provide review writing/reading features on their sites. Their customers send reviews remotely and can view all relevant review summaries/ratings on the partner site. The first partner (to be named) integration will launch in March.

LouderVoice is currently adding features like a very lightweight tagging system for review collection and the addition of video sites, podcasting sites and social networks as new source streams. The goal is to house all reviews written by an individual, no matter where they are generated, so that they can be found via one site, building the individual's reputation.

LouderVoice V2 is planned to launch in February with added Web 2.0 features allowing users to follow their favourite reviewers and an internal reviewing function for those who aren't bloggers. The site will also be re-designed with a sleeker look and feel and more robust navigation.

What I find refreshing about the model is that as opposed to offering cash for specific product reviews like ReviewStream or ReviewsArena (among a growing list of others), the site is offering a reputation building vehicle, blogging tools and blog traffic as an incentive. This allows them to avoid the sketchy “this review is a paid advertisement” disclaimer other review writing networks are tied to on all of their aggregated content.

Conor described three revenue streams for the business. The first is standard contextual advertising on the site which is well suited to review-style content. The second is a partner/white-label model and the third is a partner customer feedback system (more centered on the SMS interface).

Varying approaches to combat trusted reviews are cropping up everywhere. As privacy concerns are surfacing about portable reputation engines, LouderVoice’s model provides a timely and unique alternative. With LouderVoice’s potential for rich content and its focused review writing environment, it looks like they have the right ingredients in place. As usual, it's a numbers game, driving consistent content will be a challenge. Conor appears to be up for it.

The product is currently being rolled out in Ireland and UK with marketing plans to follow for Europe and North America.

A Better Mousetrap? Clikity Split

Today Jim Clouse, CEO of ClikitySplit took me through the new local search site that is sure to cause waves in the space.

The Tennessee based company launched only six days ago and is based on a visual mapping platform.

Currently populated with over 135,000 hotels, the search engine allows users to select criteria and have all listings appear on the map in the form of visual billboards. Green dots are collapsed free listings and the red dots are those listings that are actively advertising with rich content.


Jim is going full steam after the traditional search engines citing that the current algorithms throw a major wrench into the user experience and relevancy of their searches. The ClikitySplit model displays all options and lets the users decide what is relevant to them.

While there are a few technical bugs left to sort out (less than a week old), the interface is intuitive and quick considering the rich content it holds.

There are currently four advertising options for local advertisers. The differences are not in ranking or positioning but rather in the content they are able to communicate to users. Advertisers can choose from creating basic billboards containing “quick info” and “specials”, or move up two levels and go full torque with a premium listing that allows them to upload video and audio media to their billboards.

The system is self-procured but advertisers can get support if desired through an account management team.

Perhaps the most interesting piece from an advertiser perspective is the batch uploading tool. For centralized accounts, advertisers can upload an entire database to create hundreds of billboards and then customize them individually through an administrative back office that can be tweaked for permissions. This piece gives ClikitySplit a quick entrance to agencies handling larger national brands as well as centralized marketing directors of franchised operations.

The obvious hurdle to jump will be in capturing market share but Jim was bullish on this. He’s confident that ClikitySplit is the better mousetrap and users will eventually choose applications that work for them. This and a major media effort coming out over the next few months may start the ball rolling.

The platform is built for mobility and applications that work on phones and other devices are planned to launch as early as April.

The company is currently is discussions with potential mobility partners. It will be interesting to see if it gets snapped up with all the M&A’s currently going on.

Local Surfing and the Problem with Tagging

We all know that local search is still not where it’s destined to be but I’m concerned with the apparent tagging frenzy that is taking place right now. I believe it’s driving irrelevant impressions, interrupting the user experience and creating a massive mess to mop up later. In my own research I’ve been struck by the reality that I’m made to surf for local content rather than find it easily through any given local search property. In a Web 2.0 world, how 1999 is that?

One of the larger issues faced by the publishers in local search is the natural inconsistency in inventory by vertical and geography. Over the past few years the industry has pushed itself to simplifying the buying process through arbitrage models. Small businesses are offered “buckets of clicks”, pay upfront and wait for the clicks to come in.

So, it’s in the publishers’ best interest to deliver the clicks in as little time as possible and are therefore motivated to heighten the ad appearances across the media property in the hopes that consumers will click.

As part of this drive to deliver clicks, the notion of tagging has taken off, with publishers offering advertisers the ability to self select categories or “tag” their businesses with in some cases, unlimited tags. The practice is often positioned as SEO and eager business owners are left to their own creativity to develop copy, categories and tagging. The result is an ever-increasing pile of irrelevant data making it difficult for users to find what they’re looking for and ultimately for advertisers to get the truly qualified leads they're after.

Traditionally, the yellow pages industry was more regulated in categorization. Advertisers would gain presence in 3-5 relevant categories, pay and wait for the calls to come in. Rigidity aside, at least consumers got what they were looking for. Maybe this is why directories have such an attractive model – church and state are so clearly defined that the advertiser value of simple inclusion is transparent. Performance models have disrupted this.

I don't mean to pick on the publishers here but this issue is only going to get worse as advertisers continue to invest in their properties. Cleaning up business profiles and bad tags is not something you want to be saddled with in the future. These misplaced listings are starting to look a lot like invasive spam.

Here’s an example of a search done on CitySearch for Pizza in Tampa - the third listing is for Salon Jack - Beauty & Fitness, Barbers, Spas etc...


The same search using YellowPages.com- my search was for businesses that included pizza in the business information. Mettler Toledo is the world's leading scale manufacturer and currently advertises under pizza in Tampa...



And finally SuperPages.com - the second advertiser is "ShopBrite - fast delivery services"...



Ok, I was almost drawn into SuperPages because I thought the delivery advertiser for pizza in Tampa (maybe a restaurant aggregater of sorts) was relevant but upon clicking I landed on this…a results page for courier services?


The bottom line is that the user experience is being compromised in all cases. Self-procurement needs to be supplemented with publisher quality control and that might mean that pricing strategies need to be revisited. Its been almost 6 years since the advent of performance based models and online directories moving to them. Bucketing clicks is not doing the users any favours and in turn, it's doing nothing for advertisers.

Presence still has a value and publishers need to start looking at putting a price tag on it. A hybrid at the very least??

Future Gazing - Predictions for 2008...Local Search

As promised, here is the second installment of predictions for 2008.

This time I've got no excuses for ambiguity, foolishness or obvious statements so, here's a leap of faith and a wish that if they are in any way valid, you'll be on the positive end of them...



Local Search

1. Reviews

Growing skepticism as every local search guide starts to offer reviews and review communities. Businesses get hurt, gloves come off and the users catch a really good glimpse of faulty models.

Reputation management takes off on a niche agency level and becomes one of many possible shiny new service offerings within the struggling CMR community.

Those sites that implemented the right models will see a slowed but steady increase in UGC while the others see acute growth at the start of the year with a sharp drop off in Q2.

2. CRM

As small businesses start to recognize the value of two way communications with their customers, there will be an increased interest in CRM solutions for the small business person and as such, the local search providers will start to capitalize on this by adding offerings to their mix. Some smaller niche sites have a head start and I believe that the mainstreams will take it to the next level.

This is one of my favourite topics and I’m really looking to 2008 for it’s big debut.

3. Retail Based

As users come to expect more from their local search engines, it will become necessary to tie retail based results into the engines. The complexities surrounding inventory will be hashed out this year paving the way for full-on retail search by product-type, brand, and SKU in 2009. Krillion leads the thought process here but many more players surface.

4. Networks

Newspapers, radio and TV broadcasters start to get aggregated into network models. Smaller players will get the ball rolling but larger media companies will enter with higher levels of sophistication and ultimately revenue opportunities.

It will be the year of packaging local to the masses for non-search based networks. Yellow Pages publishers will want a piece of this display-based pie (naturally).

5. Social Network battle

Local search engines come to the realization that they are not social networks by nature. Hopefully, they will focus on their claim to be local search experts without trying to over extend their services to the point of unfocused mediocrity.

Partnering with the Social Networks becomes more attractive and more difficult as bidding wars start to surface. Supply and demand makes it possible for the networks to pick and choose.

Mini applications (although they are tired) will put some thorns in the sides of publishers.

6. Maps

Accuracy issues are resolved this year. Despite some outrage over UGC being applied to the correction of map applications, the ability for outsiders to do this is a long sought after development and will become a service offering for agencies managing multiple accounts or marketing directors.

The true value behind mapping isn’t unleashed yet this year. It’s still sorting out bugs and getting media revenue matched up with GPS. Q3?

7. SEO

Vertical directories start to compete heavily with the national directories and gain visibility in the organic playing field.

Rich media throw wrenches into the algorithms (for a short while)

Some developments in advanced taxonomy take place. The inclusion of pronouns etc. to get deeper SEO results combined with the human engines that are cropping up will enhance user experiences and challenge SEO agencies.


8. Mobile Searching

Thanks to the swank new devices introduced in ‘07, user experience is enhanced to the point of full local search adoption among the holders of those devices. The Google OS will seal this deal and make it ultra-intuitive to search locally, communicate findings and maintain them portably.

Users will want more though, and the current content will frustrate the masses. Fortunately for the industry, this won’t mean abandonment. The need is clear and users will be (without choice) patient while the products come together.

I know there's more as this industry is bursting with momentum in a ton of directions. I thought I'd mention the easy ones.

Toys for the Elite...ASMALLWORLD adds Depth

"Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.”
William Shakespeare

ASMALLWORLD announced the addition of new features to its network today.

ASW, the elite social network has made moves towards deepening interactivity on their site. The site is known for it’s exclusivity and niche targeting but has had some struggles with user frequency and loyalty in the face of mainstream networks’ rich content offerings.

Among the enhancements are an improved friend search engine that allows users to find members by interests and clubs, photo sharing capabilities, an event guide that allows users to post global events to a public calendar, and a "fabulous" hotel finder. The enhancements are not earth shattering. Rather, they fall in line with ASW's profile of prudence. Rolling out tried and tested Web 2.0 features eliminates inconveniences and social uproar.

The site remains true to its original intent, which is to connect elite networkers for business and pleasure. The by-invite-only site has been growing steadily since its launch in 2004. While a large proportion of the members are entrepreneurial and/or business leaders, there appears to be an ever-increasing number of gurus in media, entertainment, fashion, the arts and sports. The latter provides for rich content for the signature ASW Magazine, which spotlights members and publishes interviews on topics related to their profiles.

Another area of growth appears to be the ”guides” section. Taking full advantage of the network’s commitment to trusted members who have existing social networks of quality, ASMALLWORLD also offers select information most specifically in the tourism vertical as members have a high propensity to travel and eat well. In this environment, hotel and restaurant ratings and reviews have an ideal trusted affect.

It looks like Erik Wachtmeister, Chairman and Founder of ASW, has rallied the right troops behind him. Joe Robinson recently joined the company as President and CEO. Judging by today's release and his "hit the ground running" style member correspondence, he’s already making waves with the experience he's brought to the table.

Having accomplished the task of aggregating “exclusivity en masse”, I believe that time is on ASW’s side when it comes to improving user experience. It seems a lot easier to make enhancements to an existing network than to draw new users through hit or miss product launches. There’s something to be said for slower growth while gaining a deeper understanding of user needs.

From a business model stand point, the remaining challenge will be to monetize deeply into their niche network and to continuously mine new value from a finite audience.

The Four Contenders - Mingling with Social

Inspired by yesterday’s reading of GigaOm’s blog about WordPress’ experimentation with Social Networking, I decided to look a bit further into the subject. It seems there are a number of contenders that appear to have a framework to mobilize a networking platform.

As eMarketer estimates the by 2011, US ad spending on social networks is expected to reach $2.5 billion, it's no surprise that a number of suitors will make their way towards the dowry.

Of the many channels vying to get social, the four that seem most aggressive are email, blog, instant messaging and yellow pages. Here are some thoughts on each:

Email

Quick Stats:

• According to comScore 2007 data, Global E-Mail (does not include non browser based e-mail) receives 556 million unique visits per month.
• eMarketer reports that email penetration is at 91% among Internet users between the ages of 18 and 64. The same report shows that search engine use is the second highest in penetration.
• Yahoo has 80 million users worldwide. According to Yahoo, users spend an average 24 minutes per day using the services. This is more than MySpace, Facebook and YouTube combined (24 min compared to 21 min daily). (Thanks Dave!)
• The only stat I could find on Google was that there were 20 million unique US users to gmail.com since November. (Thanks Eric!)
  

Address books, contacts friends, whatever you want to call them they are the common denominator when it comes to social networking. Browser based email has a big piece of the social pie here. The second step to almost every network around is to import contacts from existing email accounts.

I really liked this blog about Yahoo and Google planning to use their email platforms to create social networks from them. My favourite comment on the subject comes from Joe Kraus, who runs Google’s OpenSocial project, he said: “It is much easier to extend an existing habit than to create a brand.”

It looks like both Yahoo and Google may be banking on this in the future.

I'm intrigued by Yahoo’s "Inbox 2.0" project. The idea of prioritizing mail through visual enhancements according to how important the contact is for instance, sounds interesting. Using email signatures in a way that showcases rich profile information may be the strongest case for this channel.

Google and Yahoo have the masses to impress. The challenge will be to get users to create and implement the permissions attached to the multiple signatures they will inevitably need to get the most out of this platform.

Blogs

Quick Stats:

• The latest number (as of today) of blogs covered by Technorati is 112.8 million. However, this is only a fraction of the estimated number of blogs online. Blogs from China for instance, are not included in the count (representing tens of millions).
• Six Apart (TypePad) has more than 40 million users (bloggers) globally. Source: Corporate FactSheet
  
• Blogger would match if not surpass this number leaving the rest to the smaller platforms in the landscape.
• WordPress for instance, has almost 2 million bloggers. With an average of around 9,000 new blogs created each day. Monthly WordPress activity averages over 2.7 million posts on per month (over the past 5 months).

Anne Zelenka writes that blogs just might become the next social network citing that some of the product features appear to be well suited for the space. Anne went on to describe blogging’s contrast to social networking in that it offers a person-centric way for individuals to come online.

I agree with this view but I also believe that bloggers may have varying identities making it difficult to manage them in one space. A dog-loving nurse may not want to have her pet journal world collide with her private cigar aficionado friends she’s met while blogging on Cohiba-World.

Along with collecting and maintaining member contacts, for social networks to work, they require consumer oriented CMS systems that are dead easy to use and nice to look at. Blog platforms are richer versions of open CMSs and so, have a good deal of the groundwork done.

Chris Messina’s DiSo project (distributed social networking concepts) will certainly be worth watching as it unfolds. OAuth may address the colliding world issue and I’m particularly interested in the concept of “WhiteListing” as I feel this has a multitude of applications for a number of players.

Instant Messaging

Quick Stats:

• ComScore data shows global unique users of Instant Messengers was at 390 million unique visitors for the month of October 2007
• In April 2006 – comScore Networks released results of an analysis of instant messenger (IM) usage in various parts of the world for the month of February 2006. Some highlights included:
• Eighty-two million people, or 49% of the European online population, used IM applications to communicate online in the month of February.
• Sixty-nine million people in North America, or only 37 percent of the online population, used IM during the same timeframe.The analysis showed that IM is most heavily used in the Latin American region, with 64 percent of the online population using IM in February

I had an interesting chat with Rajesh Bathia, one of the founders of buddystumbler.com the other day. Buddystumbler is built on the premise that user behavior is king when it comes to capturing and maintaining active social networkers. The product is still in its infancy but the concept has been mapped out.

Upon registration, users dump all their chat contacts into the platform and go on to create profiles attached to their handle. Rajesh talked of some interesting partnership plans that allow users to display their status, blog and photo updates within the chat environment. Registered users are able to browse the entire network (Rajesh hopes that this will be a major combined share of AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Google).

While there are many factors that make this approach very natural, I am haunted with Joe Kraus’ comment about creating a new brand vs. extending the usage of those that already exist.

Yellow Pages

Quick Stats:

• comScore reports 808.6MM IYP search queries in Q1 of 2007 (including Google & Yahoo) this amounts to around 269MM queries per month
• comScore’s 2006 release of IYP Share Data as showcased on Greg Sterling’s blog last summer showed that the majority (over 85%) of all Internet searches occur on the major search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN.

This leaves yellow pages publishers scrambling to re-invent themselves to gain share in consumers’ ever-fragmenting daily media usage.

The new generation of yellow pages sites have taken some time to abandon their structures which have been deeply rooted in their rigid print legacy. SuperPages.com for one, has made great strides towards positioning itself as a player in this space. The first real movement towards the directory channel's new image was its circa 2004 proclamation that yellow pages are truly the "local search experts". Since then, publishers have been rushing towards social networking opportunities as research continues to point towards localized word of mouth as the holy grail of profitably putting buyers and sellers together.

While those publishers who are heavily ensconced in their past through branding are struggling, sites like MojoPages and Yelp have been built from the ground up to harness the power of socializing in a directory context. These sites among other new entrants allow users to connect with friends and other people in their neighborhoods to share reviews and feedback on local businesses.

With social networking enablers like Montreal-based Praized, yellow pages publishers may be able to transform themselves effectively if they act quickly. Time will tell.

I think the biggest challenge is that directory usage has historically been categorized as just that. Looking to make friends on a yellow pages site brings with it a multitude of issues. Users looking to get an address or phone number are now being asked to fragment their time further to share reviews and look up profiles of other reviewers. User experiences may be compromised as the focus shifts on socializing vs. having accurate, rich directory data.

To date, there has been some success through plugging directories into social networks but the evolution of pure play yellow pages to social has been difficult.

In summary, I have to defer to my theme comment of the day (thanks Joe), “It is much easier to extend an existing habit than to create a brand.” It's hard to argue with the hundreds of millions of email users that have and will continue (for the foreseeable future) to use the application as a mainstay.

With the growing concern over the time wasting going on within the pure play social networks, finding a work around might be the key. To this end, I'd hedge my bets and cast at least a strong vote in favor of email.

In the meantime Google, can you please make it stop snowing? Or at least moderate it?

Local Search via WiFi - SkyHook

Ted Morgan, President & CEO of SkyHook presented at Kelsey’s ILM ’07 conference this past week.

What is it
Skyhook is a WiFi Positioning System (WPS). It’s location platform uses existing 802.11 radio (WiFi frequency) to deliver accurate positioning. WiFi has proliferated over the past 5 years. Tens of millions of access points have been deployed privately, corporately and publicly. Each one of these access points sends a signal beacon announcing its existence to the surrounding area. The beacon travels between 150-200 meters in all directions.

Due to the shear volume of beacons, the overlap of their signals creates a natural reference system for determining location. Skyhook’s system can locate up to a 20m accuracy level (to date, unparalleled). Currently the service works across the US but Skyhook plans to map the globe with their system.

Looking at Skyhook’s coverage map, it’s reminiscent of a cellular coverage map. The platform works extremely well within densely populated urban centers. As the purpose for the deployment of WiFi access points is mainly to provide high-speed wireless coverage inside public and private buildings, WPS has excellent coverage and performance indoors. These attributes distinguish WPS from other satellite or terrestrial positioning systems, which struggle to deliver positioning information in urban and indoor environments.

Skyhook’s software application is called Loki. The application allows you to quickly find location-dependent content. The content includes weather, movies playing nearby and local news. Local ads are incorporated into the content and AdSense ads runs along the sidebar. Today, about 500,000 people have downloaded Loki. Skyhook is obviously counting on more to come.


Benefits
Access - Most mobile devices lack native positioning systems or rely on technologies that struggle in densely populated and indoor environments. As a software-only system, WPS addresses these issues by offering the highest indoor availability and the best overall urban reliability of any existing location platform.

Accuracy – 20M is not bad considering GPSs limitations in this area. Google just launched MyLocation, a mobile mapping tool that triangulates your location based on your distance to cell towers.
But the technology is only accurate within 1000 meters on average. The only advantage Google may have at this point is its coverage outside of urban areas where WiFi is less likely to exist for the next few years.

Strong Markets – the fact that the network is strongest in densely populated urban areas gives Skyhook a good opportunity for quick penetration. Its accuracy in these areas will go a long way to winning satisfied customers.

General Thoughts
Location based content has been used for a number of applications. One of the more entertaining ones described by Ted Morgan, President & CEO of SkyHook was for mobile gaming. Capture the Flag for example is a popular game in Manhattan, where connected players claim certain city blocks as their own until conquered by opponents. Gaming is coming up more and more these days. I’ll follow-up on this topic and how advertising relates later. But Morgan went on to say that the true killer application for this platform was navigation (maps) and local search.

The biggest challenge will be to get the right content partnerships. Currently, it’s unclear what SkyHook’s strategy is. On the one hand, it has an excellent platform for targeting and on the other it has its Loki software.

The software is in beta and has a lot of development to go. It’s channels are somewhat limited and rather than providing a directory, it’s clear that there are selected content partners populating the site. One gets the feeling that there’s a lot missing. Also, similar to Facebook, it feels like there’s a lot of downloading to be done. Mini-applications are required to gain access to cool features.

Another one to watch…

CRM - It Can't be that Hard

I’m trying to put my finger on exactly why I feel that localized, small business CRM is going to explode over the next year. I know it wasn’t Google’s announcement of their partnership to SalesForce.com and it’s not like contact management systems like ACT! and Goldmine really fascinate me.

Maybe it’s the idea that millions of small businesses with a newfound interest in online media (specifically email marketing), could really use a comprehensive CRM system that provides marketing automation with the same level of sophistication as some of the systems being used by national advertisers.

Just like content management solutions have long been integrated into directories, wouldn’t it be prudent to offer a marketing system to compliment the existing services?

As publishers are under increasing pressure to provide performance models, they must play a larger role in yielding higher conversions for their advertisers. This way they can manage inventory (or offset the cost of a lack of it).

I think I’m starting to get impatient about this topic. It feels like it’s been years since the capabilities have existed. Why isn’t anyone connecting these dots? Granted, they may be busy buying up Pay-Per-Call platforms and what not...but I really believe that this is a huge piece of the puzzle that could go a long way to differentiate one local search or online directory from another.

With all the advancements in this field namely Force.com's multi-tenant "platform as a service" roll out this year, it seems like this investment is a no-brainer.

I have too many thoughts on this to map it all out in a blog. I will have to take this little favourite topic of mine offline for a while and maybe spell it out to those that might listen.

Blocked Traffic on Social Networks & The Advantages of Being Anti-Social

IT Security companies are effectively communicating (or marketing) the need for corporations to be concerned about security and loss of productivity due to employees wasting time on social networking sites. As a result, the valuable traffic to these sites may start to diminish during peak media messaging hours (9-5).

Back in September according to this BBC article, a UK law firm, Peninsula, estimated a loss of 233 million hours per month or £130 million a day by employees “wasting time” visiting social networking sites on the internet.

The estimates were based on a survey conducted of 3500 UK companies, suggesting that some employees spend up to two hours a day visiting social networking sites at employers’ expense.

While findings of the survey were alarming, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) told AFP that the total ban to networking sites would be “something of an over-reaction”.

But earlier this month, Barracuda Networks released a survey based on data contributed by several thousand customers. The survey showed that 44% of companies using Barracuda's Web filtering technology block access to MySpace, and 26% are doing the same to Facebook. The analysis showed that while 19% of companies blocked both the sites, half said they block one or the other or both.

In a separate survey of Barracuda 228 IT security workers, results showed that 53% of businesses restrict Web surfing. This number is expected to increase by 23% in 2008 to 65 percent.

The top motivations behind these restrictive measures were:

• Prevent virus or spyware (70%)
• Control employee productivity drain (52%)
• Lessen the load on bandwidth (36%)
• Liability issues (28%)

In August, Sophos, an international provider of IT security and control, released a report that showed 43% of 600 polled workers said their employer blocks Facebook access completely.

According to Sophos, 41% of Facebook users are willing to disclose personal information to complete strangers. And details such as employment history and mobile phone numbers found on Facebook could be used to launch corporate phishing attacks, security experts warn.

Social networks have been making major strides towards becoming directionally focused. Some have partnered with online directories; some have added business advertising opportunities and many have started to cultivate reviews. If this trend continues and corporations continue to block the major social networks from their employees, ironically, the anti-social characteristics of today’s directories and local search engines may be their greatest advantage. Consumers who tend to plan dinners, movies and other after work activities online may be forced to use less social environments.

I’m getting more data on this…