Handicapping the iPad

I’ve been in a number of conversations of late where people are pretty polarized over the question of whether the iPad will be a hit or a bold swing-and-a-miss. My view is that it will start slow and then eventually become a big hit as people actually get a chance to hold them, see the screen resolution and want one for themselves.

Many people are disappointed that the iPad wasn’t simply a flat-screen version of a Macbook. And to that end many computer OEMs are putting PC operating systems and chips on slate computers.

I think that Apple is being smarter with its approach to the iPad. A touch-screen slate computer that isn’t aggressively discounted is just going to be a disappointing or weaker version of a laptop. What Apple may have created in the iPad is distinct category that has distinct use cases and functionality — this is what Apple clearly argues — although it’s missing some of the features and capabilities that some had hoped for.

Lots of survey data have come out and can be read in a half-full or half-empty way. For example, AdMob’s recent survey data show “only” 16% of iPhone users are interested in buying the iPad.

Alternatively one can argue, using ChangeWave data, that there positive indicators for Apple in that there are more people interested in the iPad today than were interested in the iPhone at launch in 2007:

Those somewhat or very likely to buy the iPad vs. iPhone in 2007 before release:

Source: RBC Capital Markets/ChangeWave, 2/10 (n=3,200)

And an earlier Retrevo survey showed 30% of respondents (n=1,000) were interested in the device, although the Retrevo post about the data plays up the “negative” side of results.

Developers and publishers of all kinds are preparing (or considering whether to prepare) for its release into the market.

I think it’s ultimately going to be a hit but what do you think? Do you think it will succeed or fail?

Yelp CEO Responds to Lawsuit

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has drafted a blog post that responds to the allegations in the class action lawsuit filed earlier in the week:

There has been a long history of people accusing Yelp of monkeying around with reviews in exchange for money. The allegations are disappointing, not only because they are false, but because they ignore empirical evidence in favor of conspiracy theories.

You can see for yourself: thousands of businesses that advertise on Yelp have both negative and positive reviews. Despite these counter-examples to the contrary (virtually no advertiser on Yelp has a perfect reputation), extensive media explorations that end inconclusively, and the absence of any actual evidence to support this theory, this unfortunate and untrue meme has taken on a life of its own.

He goes on to deny there’s any merit to the suit . . .

Separately Yelp has replaced Yahoo! on the Ask the Local Search Engines panel (also featuring Google and Microsoft) at next week’s SMX West show in Santa Clara. I’ll be moderating the panel and look forward to a very interesting and satisfying discussion.

Google Adds Location to Search Options

Google is adding a “nearby” feature to the “search options” panel. The Google Blog explains:

Check it out by doing a search, clicking on “show options” and selecting “Nearby.”

You can choose to see results nearby either your default location or a custom location, and you can narrow down to results at the city, region or state level . . .

Here’s what it looks like:

Here’s more discussion at SEL:

• Yes, More Are Seeing A New Google Look-And-Feel
• Google Adds “Nearby” Local Search To Options Panel 

Survey: Local NP Sites ‘Most Trusted’

Newspaper sites are valuable and credible goddamit! A November 2009 survey among 3,050 US adults, sponsored by the Newspaper Assn of America (fielded by comScore), found the following:

Local newspaper Web sites ranked first among all sources for trustworthiness, credibility and being the most informative place to find local content of all types – including news, information, entertainment, sports and classified advertising. When respondents were asked what sources were most trustworthy or reliable, local newspaper Web sites bested local television sites by twelve percentage points for local information (34 percent vs. 22 percent), by six points for local sports (30 percent vs. 24 percent), by 10 points for local entertainment (30 percent vs. 20 percent) and by 29 points for local classifieds (42 percent vs. 13 percent).

Let’s look at some of the data from the associated report, Site Matters: The Value of Local Newspaper Web Sites, which asked consumers a range of questions about their sources for local information and how trustworthy and credible they perceived those sources to be . . .

Noticeably absent from the list above are yellow pages directories, search engines and city guides and other types of local sites such as Yelp — although they might fall into “other type of Web site” perhaps.

These are not all the findings but what they assert is the following:

• People care about local information
• Newspaper websites are the go-to sources for local news and other content
• Newspaper websites are more trusted and credible for local information
• Newspaper sites make the ads that appear on them more effective (for 40% of consumer-respondents)

These data echo a 2008 OPA study about newspaper and other local content sites, whose findings are somewhat more varied but generally consistent.

There’s no question that people value local content and newspaper sites are well regarded. Yet here’s TMP-comScore data (mirrored by other studies) that show something different in response to a slightly different question:

How Local Is Local? Six Miles It Seems

Earlier this week on the “Local Search Is Different” webinar with Marchex and Localeze, I cited TMP-comScore survey data that show a majority of people seek out businesses within 15 miles of their home. In fact this stat is the source of TMP’s decision to name its search agency 15 miles.

Source: comsScore-TMPDM (7/09), n=4,000

But I ran across some other data this week suggesting that when it comes to actual behavior the range is even smaller: six miles.

A study originally appearing in Science magazine used wireless carrier data to examine mobile subscriber movements around town. Most people stayed within a six mile radius (of home):

[R]esearchers looked at customer location data culled from cellular service providers. By looking at how customers moved around, the authors of the study found that it may be possible to predict human movement patterns and location up to 93 percent of the time.

Most customers seemed to stick to the same small area, a radius of six miles or less, but there were a few callers that regularly traveled areas of a radius of hundreds of miles . . .

Customers that stuck to the same six-mile radius had predictability rates of 97 to 93 percent . . .

This shows that while people want and expect businesses to be within 15 miles of home the actual distance that a majority travel to shop and buy is less than half that range.

4Square to Get Big Boost from Bravo TV

TechCruch points to the new Bravo Promotion (associated with the show Top Chef) for Foursquare that will begin airing on TV. This is huge for Foursquare and will boost its brand recognition and (probably) usage. 

The TV spot positions Foursquare as a kind of social cityguide (which is how it will broaden its appeal). 

Clients of Internet2Go can read my analysis of how Foursquare and related apps may be helping to change the “culture” and expectations surrounding local-mobile search and LBS: How ‘Geo-Social Gaming’ Is Changing Local Mobile Search.

MapQ Adds ’360 Cities’, Place Pages on Earth

MapQuest has added more 360 Cities: an additional 13 cities and 11 suburbs. Imagery is provided by Immersive Media (Google’s launch partner for Street View).

In addition, Google has added Place Pages (lite) to 3D Building on Google Earth:

Canpages Releases an API

Call it a Canadian version of Citysearch’s CityGrid strategy. Canpages has just released an API and is about to announce a developer contest.

The API includes images, videos, recommendations & lat/long. There are also 1.3 million Canadian business listings made available through the API.

I’m not clear on whether monetization is a part of this, but I would imagine so (w/rev share to third party developers). This strategy represents something of a challenge for dominant Canadian local publisher YPG, which outside of Google is the leading “local search” provider in Canada.

Will YPG match this? And will this strategy make its way south?

A number of US publishers have considered something like this but Citysearch is the only company to really broadly syndicate its listings — so far.

Placecast Makes ‘Starbucks Coupon’ Fantasy Real

Anyone connected with mobile has heard the “you’re walking by a Starbucks” and you receive a coupon story a bazillion times. This has been an LBS mobile marketing fantasy (and in many ways misguided) for literally years. But today Placecast formally introduced a capability that makes this fantasy real and improves upon it.

The company has announced “ShopAlerts” for retailers.

This is SMS-marketing that consumers opt-in to receive. There are many such solutions in the market already. However the novel and “Starbucks coupon”-like element is that consumers who’ve opted-in will only get these messages when they’re within a certain distance from a retail outlet. This methodology is called “geo fencing.”

Here’s the Placecast video explaining:

I also have a more extensive discussion on Internet2Go.

Webinar: ‘Local Search Is Different’ Starting Soon

There’s still time to hear me, Marchex and Localeze discuss local search in a free webinar starting at the top of the hour: 2 pm Pacific, 5 Eastern.

Go here to register and listen:

Yelp Hit with Class Action for ‘Extortion’

I’ve written up the details of the litigation over at Search Engine Land . . .

Two class action law firms have filed suit in Los Angeles federal court claiming that Yelp has attempted to “extort” money from small businesses by offering to remove negative reviews in exchange for payment. The suit contends:

Yelp runs an extortion scheme in which the company’s employees call businesses demanding monthly payments, in the guise of “advertising contracts,” in exchange for removing or modifying negative reviews appearing on the website.  The plaintiff, a veterinary hospital in Long Beach, California, asked that Yelp remove a false and defamatory review from the website.  In response, as set forth in the lawsuit, Yelp refused to take down the review.  Instead, the company’s sales representatives repeatedly contacted the hospital and demanded a roughly $300 per-month payment in exchange for hiding or removing the negative review.

This kind of allegation has been out in the media in the past. Most notably in an article that appeared in weekly publication the East Bay Express almost exactly a year ago. The article was called Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0 . . .

It was all I could do to keep myself from saying the action was total bullshit. You’ve got a frustrated plaintiff who may have had an anomalous experience or misunderstood what was going on and a couple of opportunistic attorneys seeking national PR.

Evidence could prove me wrong but I just don’t believe it.

Yipit, Group Buying and SMBs

I recently wrote a short post about Groupon and the growing phenomenon of group buying online. Among the several companies I mentioned in the post was Yipit. I lumped the company in with several others as purveyors of local deals to consumers. Shortly thereafter I was contacted by the co-founders of Yipit (who wanted to clarify the nature of their service) and I had a fascinating conversation with them about the entire segment.

Rather than a direct competitor to these group buying sites the company aims to position itself as the “kayak of group buying.”

What that effectively means is that Yipit aggregates deals from many providers (there are a growing number; see list at bottom). The consumer-user selects the desired offer and clicks through to transact on the underlying third party site, in the same way that Kayak refers leads to airlines or hotels. Similarly Yipit takes a referral or affiliate fee for the lead — provided there’s a transaction that occurs.

The way that Yipit improves upon any one of these sites (e.g., Groupon) is that it brings together much more inventory (offers) than any one of these sites individually. Because of this, it allows users to select areas of interest and not receive offers that aren’t relevant. That has always been my experience with Groupon itself; the concept is great but there are lots of deals I’m not interested in:

The concept of group buying has been around since Mercata and the late 1990s. However in “act 1″ of the Internet it never took off. Now it has momentum on the heels of the general growth of online coupons and social networks more broadly. Consumers love deals and these sites only charge businesses — mostly SMBs — if enough people show up and a sale is made, collectively speaking:

The offers are always time-sensitive and require a commitment/purchase up front by the user. And the structure of the offer creates competition to ensure that the minimum required volume is met.

Each of the sites that Yipit “indexes” are effectively telephone sales channels, which negotiate these deals with local merchants. Yipit then delivers, or helps deliver, traffic to those individual sites.

I was told by Yipit that where there were once just two or three of group buying sites, now there are dozens of them. The barriers to entry are very low: a wordpress blog, a telephone sales and some email software.

Another fascinating thing to consider is that the risk to the merchant is almost zero; SMBs only pay when the group deal is secured. Thus it becomes potentially easier to sell something like this (especially by a “no name” company that the SMB hasn’t heard of) than more conventional “advertising.”

There’s no “ad budget” that gets tapped; the commission is a slice of sales. Consequently there may be more money for these types of programs than for “advertising.” The notion that “SEM funds itself” is one of the myths of paid search, which is especially a myth in the case of small business. However that is in fact true in this case.

If these group buying sites develop enough momentum there’s a kind of parallel universe of SMB promotions that might arise, where the value proposition is more direct and transparent to the merchant and the risk much less than buying clicks or even calls in some sense. While this is clearly not a model and channel that’s going to work for plumbers or lawyers, it probably works for a much broader group of local businesses than one might think.

Here are the sites (or most of the sites) that Yipit draws upon to serve up geographically relevant deals and offers:

Do you think “grouponing” is a fad or a phenomenon that is here to stay in some sense?

FCC: 22% Not Web Users (but Have Cellphones)

The US FCC has released a report, based on a survey of more than 5,000 US consumers in November. The survey captures attitudes and self-reported behavior about Internet adoption and broadband usage. Much of the report focuses on demographics and cost as a factor in the above.

However there are other interesting findings. Here are some I’ve quickly selected (verbatim from the report):

• 78 percent of adults are Internet users, whether that means broadband, dial-up, access from home or access from someplace other than home.
• 74 percent of adults have access at home.
• 67 percent of U.S. households contain a broadband user who accesses the service at home.
• 65 percent of adults are broadband adopters. The discrepancy of two percentage points between household and individual home use is because some survey respondents are non-broadband users but live with someone who, at home, is.
• 6 percent of Americans use dial-up Internet connections as their main form of home access.
• 6 percent are Internet users but do not use it from home; they access the Internet from places such as work, the library or community centers.
• 22 percent of adults are not Internet users. They are the oldest non-adopting group, with a median age of 60, and include the highest share of Hispanics (at 20 percent). Some 84 percent have high school degrees or less and half live in households with annual incomes of $30,000 per year or less.

Of this last group of so-called non (broadband) adopters, “70 percent have a cell phone.”

Snapshot of online activities segmented by access type (click to enlarge):

Note that “local or community news” is the second most common type of activity online (according to this survey), even more than social networking.

Webinar Tomorrow: Local Search Is Different

Coming up tomorrow . . . free webinar “Local Search Is Different” with Gib Olander from Localeze and Matthew Berk of Marchex.

They’ll answer your burning questions and discuss a range of issues:

• Data integrity
• Managing multiple listings
• Reputation management
• Local SEO and using directories for better search exposure
• And other issues specific to local

The session starts tomorrow at 2 Pacific/4 Central/5 Eastern. It can also be watched later on demand. You can register here.

Dex Offers App for Android

The new Dex Android app was announced today. For my money it’s less interesting than the iPhone version previously launched. The most interesting new feature (vs. the iPhone app) is the ability to “purchase tickets directly through the DexKnows.com mobile app.”

However, the company’s iPhone app is more fun and creative with its Urbanspoon-like wheel of fortune.

Over at Internet2Go we just published a new report about how “geo-social games” (e.g., Foursquare) may be changing the expectations and culture surrounding local mobile search. The doc is clients only but here’s the bottom line:

Media companies and publishers in the local segment must take a careful look at this emerging phenomenon and figure out how to smartly respond in one or more of the ways discussed above. They should not, however, dismiss it as a fad or something exclusively for college students or “geeks” and early adopters. That same type of bemusement and scorn were the prevailing attitudes that also greeted Twitter when it first launched.

The point in bringing up is to illustrate how rapidly the landscape may be shifting in mobile. As Yelp has done publishers will need to incorporate some of the features being popularized in these apps. But they also need to be selective and careful. There are also opportunities to partner as well (e.g., Citysearch-MyTown).

YPG Buys Deals Sites, 411 Brand

I’ve been thinking recently that yellow pages providers increasingly should think of themselves as “local holding companies,” with a portfolio of sites and brands to address different audience segments and/or advertiser needs. The “yellow pages” will be an effective tool for some consumers and advertisers but not everyone — one size doesn’t fit all anymore. 

There are going to need to be other brands and sites that publishers operate in order to reach audiences and advertisers for whom “yellow pages” is no longer as meaningful or effective a tool. This is the concept in part behind AT&T’s Buzz.com

YPG appears to be moving in this general direction having recently acquired a restaurant vertical Restaurantica. And today the company announced that it had acquired RedFlagDeals.com, “a leader in providing online promotions and shopping tools to Canadians. With 2.2 million unique visitors every month.”

YPG also said it was buying the 411.ca brand and making an investment in the company that previously owned it:

Yellow Pages Group (YPG) and 411 Local Search Corp., operator of 411.ca™, announced today that they have signed an agreement under which terms YPG will purchase the 411.ca brand and domain names and acquire an ownership interest in 411 Local Search Corp. The agreement will further enable both companies to leverage the online traffic between YPG’s leading Canada411.ca™ and YellowPages.ca™ properties, and 411.ca, a fast-growing online directory. This agreement that unites two of Canada’s largest local search engines will provide enhanced online reach for advertisers and a greater experience for users.

The deals site acquisition is particularly timely because coupons and offers are very hot (extending into mobile). There are two other shopping-related destinations that come with that deal according to the release:

• RedFlagDeals.com, the largest aggregator of discounts and coupons on the web and mobile with hundreds of new deals posted every week.
• PriceCanada.com, a price comparison engine, allowing users to search dozens of online retailers, compare product features and make informed purchases.
• Scarlett Lounge, the leading source for deals in fashion and beauty for women.

As an aside, YPG has a site with great potential in Answers (from Praized), but it’s currently underdeveloped. It could morph into a FourSquare or Aardvark-like site in mobile. 

But what do you think of the general idea I’m asserting above: that YP publishers should operate a range of brands and sites in the local segment rather than relying on a single YP-branded site or more than one, similar YP-like sites?

Winery Uses Twitter to Push 4Square Mayor Race

Andrew Shotland tweeted about California winery Wente Vineyards using Twitter to encourage people to become the “mayor” of its tasting room on FourSquare:

But where’s the incentive? Free case of wine? That’s the missing piece here.

Visual Mapper EveryScape Gains $6M Series C

Everyone is pretty familiar with the advanced mapping features battle between Google and Bing. Less well known are “tier two” players such as EveryScape and MapJack. MapQuest has also added street-level imagery (provided by Immersive Media).

Yesterday morning EveryScape announced a series C round of $6 million:

EveryScape, Inc., creator of “The Real World Online,” has secured $6 million Series C financing in a strategic round led by SK Telecom Americas, a division of SK Telecom,  South Korean leading mobile operator with over 50% market share. Existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Dace Ventures also participated.  This new financing will fuel EveryScape’s Asian market strategy, as well as propel the company’s steady growth in the U.S.

EveryScape isn’t really a destination, although it has flirted with that ambition from time to time, it’s a platform. The company has made money historically by selling interior imagery and “tours” (e.g., hotels). The exterior photography of course is “free.” Here’s an example of one of EveryScape’s interior “WebScapes”:

In Europe this type of interior photography is further along; European Directories for example said it has been rolled out to varying degrees in its eight country footprint. Google is just starting to experiment with this as well, although businesses themselves could upload images for several years. And Bing’s “Map Apps” allow third party imagery (e.g., interior images) to be layered on top of a map.

I’m going to speak to EveryScape CEO Jim Schoonmaker about “where things are” but this comment caught my eye in the release:

“EveryScape couples an unmatched technology platform that turns 2D images into 3D experiences, with a sales strategy that has landed “feet on the street” in virtually every major city in the U.S. We see vast opportunities to transport this successful strategy abroad while continuing momentum domestically,” said Richard Chin, president of SK Telecom Americas.

Certainly there’s a strategic opportunity for a technology and a platform such as EveryScape to assist companies and local sales channels that don’t have the assets or technology to develop these advanced mapping capabilities. And yes there’s a global opportunity — and a mobile opportunity, hence the SK Telecom investment. But EveryScape will have extreme difficulty with the strategy that quote implies: selling local businesses interior photography of their stores. I’ve said that from the beginning.

Yes, hotels and restaurants (and franchies) will buy this. But they’re more likely to buy it as part of a larger package and/or if they know it’s going to show up in places that consumers go online (Google, Yelp, Citysearch, Superpages), which comes back to my skepticism regarding EveryScape as a consumer destination.

There’s also a very interesting augmented reality (and maybe local-mobile social gaming) opportunity for EveryScape.

Many Would ‘Consider Paying’ for Content

The latest in a series of these types of surveys about whether consumers would pay for online content, Nielsen polled “more than 27,000 consumers across 52 countries” and found at least a potential willingness to pay for some content types.

According to the survey:

Consumers worldwide generally agree that online content will have to meet certain criteria before they shell out money to access it:

• Better than three out of every four survey participants (78%) believe if they already subscribe to a newspaper, magazine, radio or television service they should be able to use its online content for free.
• At the same time, 71% of global consumers say online content of any kind will have to be considerably better than what is currently free before they will pay for it.
• As a group, they are ambivalent about whether the quality of online content would suffer if companies could not charge for it—34% think so while 30% do not; and the remaining 36% have no firm opinion.
• But they are far more united (62%) in their conviction that once they purchase content, it should be theirs to copy or share with whomever they want.

However here’s the problem for online newspapers: “Nearly eight out of every ten (79%) would no longer use a web site that charges them, presuming they can find the same information at no cost.”

Despite that grim bullet, these findings overall provide some “hope” to publishers and traditional content producers that under the right circumstances they’ll be able to charge something for the digital versions of their content. We’ll see if tablets and the iPad have any impact on this. Most publishers will need to employ the carrot and the stick rather than just the stick to gain digital subscribers.

YPG Search Engine Solutions: ‘Not about Clicks’

Canada’s YPG has launched a combined SEM and SEO product for SMBs called “Search Engine Solutions.” It features an effective Apple-Google-like video explaining the product and how it works:

The product is built around a customized rich landing page with a custom URL that will track “every single action taken” (it extends into mobile). The “leads page” offers call tracking and will also capture clicks, emails and other “actions” (using Telmetrics and AgendiZe I believe). The leads page will feature video and maps as well.

According to the release:

At the centre of YPG’s Search Engine Solutions offering will be the ability for advertisers to create a custom leads page with interactive mapping, driving directions, and ‘send to friend’ capabilities. Businesses will also have the option of setting up call tracking to help measure the number of calls received from YPG leads.

I actually thought that YPG had a version of this in market already. But I was wrong apparently — so very wrong

As with Yodle’s recent SEO product introduction, this reflects a move away from a pure SEM solution toward a more “holistic” offering for SMBs. And because video is a prominent potential feature of the leads page it should also help YPG sell video to advertisers.

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Note to YPG PR: in the future put a version of the video up on YouTube so that it can be embedded in blogs like this.

Update: Silly me, it already exists: