Praized Launches ‘Distributed’ Local Platform

Simply put Praized is both a destination site (they call it a “hub“) and a malleable “distributed” platform that enables users of participating sites to create lists of local favorites. It immediately made me think of Eurekster in certain respects. There’s a bit of Yelp, Loladex and AgendiZe thrown in too. That’s not to say Praized is imitating these sites. Rather it’s trying to accomplish things that each of these sites in its own way is also seeking to accomplish.

All the “local conversations” (rated local businesses and comments) are aggregated and presented on the “hub,” where you can search for things as you would on any destination:

But CEO Harry Wakefield expects the real action to be on blogs and other sites (including Facebook) where publishers and their communities are building the favorites lists:

As the release points out (this is the Eurekster-like part): “a Praized installation on a vegan blog will have completely different restaurant recommendations than on a meat-lovers’ blog because the two groups have fundamentally different tastes.”

The underlying data are provided in the US by Localeze and in Canada by Yellow Pages Group. The founders of Praized, including Wakefield and Sebastien Provencher, are veterans of Yellow Pages Group. While Praized’s ambitions and vision extend well beyond the yellow pages industry, they also seek to help gain distribution for publishers like YPG or YellowBook, with which Praized has a deal. Traffic will be driven back, for example, to YellowBook’s site if users click on individual business listings on blogs or third party sites looking for profile details and more information.

If Praized catches on what it ultimately does is potentially turn any blog or publisher site into a local search destination, with a free database of local content and ratings of local businesses (to the extent the community participates). There’s a big “if” there but it’s all pretty interesting and dramatic.

You Want Job Notices on This Site?

I often get people asking me: “do you know anyone for this or that position?” I’m wondering if people would find it valuable if I allowed people to post job listings (through me) on this site? I would only take them if they were relevant to the “local” audience.

If people don’t like the idea or don’t think it would be valuable I won’t do it.

What say you?

Advice for SMB Bloggers: Write about Local

Blogging takes lots of time and energy but it can be a very effective promotional tool. Matt McGee at Small Business SEM has an interesting piece of advice for SMB owners who are blogging about their industries or areas of expertise:

If you’re a small business blogger, it’s not enough to only write about your industry. If you hope to capture local traffic, you have to write about the location, too.

The idea is that you’ll be picked up on local searches if you include information about your area, etc. That’s not going to be appropriate for everyone but it makes a lot of sense in the context, say, of realtors or small retailers in a particular shopping district or neighborhood.

WordPress Spamming Its Own Bloggers

I don’t pay to host my blog so I probably shouldn’t complain. But WordPress has started adding “possibly related posts (automatically generated)” to the ends of my entries and presumably across all its hosted blogs.

This is undoubtedly a move to expose more of its content and boost SEO and site visits within the network. There may also be an indirect monetization angle here. Not sure.

I have been very happy with WordPress until this point. However this should be regarded as spam and immediately discontinued. That would be my request.

BuzzLogic Acquires BlogRovr

BuzzLogic is one of several companies that seeks to monitor “conversations” on blogs to determine their influence on particular topics. Nielsen’s BlogPulse, for example, offers a somewhat less precise version of this capability. The company however is also a burgeoning ad network and describes itself as follows: “an online influence-targeting company and growing social media ad network.”

The clever (and logical) thing that BuzzLogic did some time ago was to recognize that once marketers and brands discovered who was influencing “conversations” online they would then want to place ads on those very same properties. And BuzzLogic is currently doing that through AdSense (which most of these blogs use). (I had not remembered this but AdSense offers specific site targeting.) However the company is quickly expanding beyond the Google content network to include other networks and direct sales.

The thing that’s different about BuzzLogic is that it’s capable of identifying issues and topics with great precision. During a briefing they used “iPod battery life” as an example with me. In other words, the blog or blogs most influential (as determined by the company’s algorithm) on that precise subtopic can be identified. Apple can then target those blogs for advertising. BuzzLogic refers to this as “conversational targeting.”

In order to further improve the company’s algorithms it has recently acquired the assets of Activweave, which operates the “browser companion” BlogRovr. BlogRovr is a browser plug-in that enables people to monitor coverage of issues on blogs that they select. Once installed a “tray” appears from the side of the browser that shows coverage about content appearing on pages the user is visiting, whether other blogs or not. Data from both the blog selections that people make and their subsequent click-stream information will now factor into the BuzzLogic algorithm for greater accuracy.

Below are screenshots of its analytics display, showing influence and its ad-buying interface:

In contrast to a more conventional blog-ad network such as Federated Media or the new Six Apart ad network, BuzzLogic offers analysis of “influence,” which isn’t always synonymous with traffic.

NY Times on Blogging: ‘Unsustainable’

The NY Times has a piece on blogging (”In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop“) and the deaths and ailments of various bloggers, including Om Malik who surved a heart attack and lived to tell about it.

It’s a cautionary tale:

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

Quoted in the article uber-blogger Michael Arrington characterizes his blogging as “unsustainable.” I identify. I feel both the relentlessness and the compulsion myself.

But the culture of blogging that drives people and is described in the NY Times piece is true of the larger Internet culture and economy as well. Blogging just brings it into more immediate and higher relief.

It’s a dysfunctional work culture where the demands are often so extreme that ten hour days are a kind of baseline. It’s rare in fact that I don’t work 12 hours per day and often 14. The sad thing is that as long as one is involved in blogging and the Internet there’s little to be done about it.

CBS Builds Local Widget Network

CBS is doing something very interesting for a traditional media company: it’s targeting blogs with a content widget and sharing revenue from associated advertising. The company is building a local ad network that will be rolled out in all of CBS local TV affiliate markets.

Here’s an example from one of the participating blogs:

There’s news (including video in the future) and a graphical ad. (The ad above is contextually targeted to the site.) If users click on the news links they go to the CBS affiliate site (where there’s another ad page view).

It’s an interesting and smart move for CBS, which is screening the participating blogs — so it’s not a true replacement for something like AdSense. CBS builds a local ad network to extend its reach, while helping drive additional traffic and page views on its affiliate sites. The blogs get some money, depending on traffic, and some locally relevant content.

Newspapers and yellow pages publishers should also be syndicating content more aggressively, beyond big publishers, and sharing revenue with third parties like this. Yell is doing something like this in the UK.

Here’s more from AP.

Harnessing Blogs for Local

Ahmed Farooq keeps encouraging me to write about local blogs or blog networks and local. The announcement that WordPress’s parent gained a B round of $29 million (covered in the WSJ and NY Times) has prompted me to do that.

Blogs have made it easy for lots of people to create content and are website alternatives for many (including me). There is lots and lots of content on blogs now, some of it is locally inflected. Outside.in is trying to capture and organize that content by neighborhood. Placeblogger is engaged in a similar project.

The thing that distinguishes a blog from a conventional website is the regular updating aspect.

Blogs represent the “long tail” of local to some degree; they also contain knowledge, information and recommendations that are otherwise difficult to find. And they offer targeted advertising opportunities. One might also see blog networks (Six Apart, WordPress, Blogger) as social networks of sorts, although the connections among bloggers are not well established. I encouraged Yahoo! to buy Six Apart or WordPress some time ago.

All this means that there’s lots of opportunity for growth and development of blog (ad) networks and the integration of blog content into local sites and so on. The NY Times is explicitly thinking along these lines and was an investor in WordPress parent Automatic’s second round. They also bought BlogRunner and now feature posts on the NY Times site in various locations.

Other newspapers are aggregating or hosting local blog content and most are thinking about doing doing so to enrich their sites. And, for its part, Topix has become a blogging platform with an emphasis on local content.

When it comes to local, blogs reflect the “voice of the community” and bring eccentricity, vitality and content otherwise unavailable to other publishers and platforms.

A Comment about Comments

I received an email last night from someone who suggested that I wasn’t commenting enough on the comments posted on my blog. That may or may not be true — sometimes I don’t have anything to add. But I want to let everyone know that I read and think about every comment. Sometimes I’m too busy to follow up and often I’ll respond to people privately in email if that makes sense to me.

I very much appreciate all the comments and participation, however.

As you’ve seen, new posts often come from readers based on email or comments I’ve received. And again I’m open to guest columns if people feel strongly about a topic or issue.

Local Blogs of Note

There are more local blogs these days. Beyond the ones you already know, here are a few you may not know that are worth reading:

• Local Point (from Marchex)
• State of Local (from Internet Broadcasting)
• Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search (Mike Blumenthal; often stuff you don’t see elsewhere)
• Natural Search Blog (from Chris Smith, not only about local but often about it)
• Small Business SEM (not always about local, but often, from Marchex’s Matt McGee)
• TechSoapBox (not only about local)
• Evans Ink (from Local Matters’ Perry Evans)
• Praized (less active now that Sebastien is building a startup)

I’m sure I’m leaving some out (beyond the highly visible ones). So let me know.

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Andrew’s blog LocalSEOGuide was a big omission on my part (Thanks Gib). And Andy Sack was writing a lot of great stuff about local at one point.

Consumer Trust, WOM and Online Ads

Related to the “Debate over User Reviews” post below are findings from a consumer survey by Nielsen that I had intended to write about, which Bob Fichtner of DRG posted about in a comment. MediaPost and BrandWeek both wrote about the study.

The data presents an interesting and mixed picture for almost everyone. Online, where lots of ad dollars are moving and arguably the only healthy sector (save outdoor) of advertising right now, is the least trusted according to the survey. From the BrandWeek article:

Nielsen, the parent company of Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek, surveyed consumers in 47 markets about their perceptions of different forms of advertising, both traditional and digital. It found that the older forms of ad messages—appearing in newspapers, magazines and on TV—far outscored the most popular forms of Web ads, search links and banner placements.

While 63% said they trust newspaper ads and 56% trusted TV spots and magazine placements, banner ads were trusted by just 26% and search ads by 34%. Even newer forms of digital advertising fared dismally: mobile advertising, forecast to become a huge marketing tactic, was trusted by just 18% of respondents.

However, consumer reviews/recommendations, blogs and “online word of mouth” were heavily trusted by contrast:

The survey also found consumer-generated media is a potentially powerful way of influencing customers. Globally, 61% said they trusted blogs and other forms of consumer-generated media as reliable sources of information. In North America, 66% said they trusted CGM.

I haven’t seen the original data and neither article discusses the “why” behind the relative trust or lack of trust. One can imagine, however, in the UGC/reviews context that users and bloggers are perceived to have credibility (vs. advertising). In addition, traditional word of mouth is inherently trusted and the online version may be benefiting from a kind of “halo effect” accordingly.

New Blog on Local SEO from Andrew Shotland

Former head of business development for InsiderPages, Andrew Shotland, has been out doing SEO work for others since he left the site. Now he’s officially got a blog to share his tips, tricks — and twisted sense of humor.

You can find it at LocalSEOGuide.com. The blog is focused on practical information for small businesses, though Andrew does consulting for startups and enterprises too.

He wanted me to be sure that I included the phrase “local search optimization” because that’s the phrase that he wants to rank for. Seriously, Andrew is a terrific source of SEO information in the local space specifically, which we all know is the most important thing happening online.

Andrew will be speaking on the community driven local search panel at SMX Local & Mobile, which starts today.

Out Today, Back Tomorrow

I’m out today but will return tomorrow. It pains me to miss a day of blogging, but I’m working on acceptance with my 12-step group.

Blogging: Stop Me Before I Hurt Myself

Sometimes it seems my day disappears to blogging. Today was one of those days. There were a total of 15 posts: 4 at SEL, 3 at LocalMobileSearch and 8 here at Screenwerk.

Guest Columns Welcome

I’ve started to get requests from people to write guest columns. I’m happy to allow people to write about all manner of things that pertain to local, search, small business, general online advertising and the myriad other subjects I cover. The more opinionated the better.

I’d like to make this blog a bit more of a forum. In fact I wish I had more time to respond to all the posting. Be assured I read and think about all of it however.

Just drop me a note and indicate what you want to write about. Anything you write should bear no resemblance to marketing copy or a sales pitch — not even a vague implied pitch hiding in an otherwise seemingly neutral description of a company. That information can be included as a tag.

Donna Bogatin Breaks Out

Donna Bogatin, marketing professor, entrepreneur, ritual conference goer, Google critic and most recently star blogger for ZDNet, has left ZDNet and launched her own blog called Insider Chatter.

Here’s her inaugural post. Donna is very thoughtful and opinionated and often very entertaining. Very much worth reading.

The Scarlet Letter “B”

Most people are at least vaguely familiar with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 19th century novel about New England Puritan morality, The Scarlet Letter. In it, heroine Hester Prynne is forced to wear an “A” on her clothes after committing adultery and giving birth to an “illegitimate” child.

By analogy, I feel these days as though I’ve now got an “B” on my forehead — for blogger. Almost everyone I speak to professionally tells me this or that “is not for blogging” or “isn’t bloggable.”

It’s getting a little silly at this point, but I guess I should take it at some level as a compliment.

Local Matters’ Evans Starts a Blog

Perry Evans, one of the founders of MapQuest and now at the helm of Local Matters, has started a locally oriented blog. You can find it here.

I’m sure it will be interesting and bring thoughtful comments and perspective to the whole evolving discussion of local search and related subjects.

Topix Flips the Model

Topix tonight is doing something entirely logical and taking a big risk at the same time. The site, which has been a “top 25″ news destination, is now effectively flipping its model and going from being a news aggregator with comments and community at the margins to a community generated local news site with wire service feeds.

It effectively creates a news blog for every zip in the United States. And Topix seeks human writers to help create and edit those local news pages.

The risky part is that strategy shift brings with it all the uncertainty and potentially uneven quality of so-called “citizen journalism.” The logical part is that this combines the site’s two great strengths and competitive differentiators (local news and community) and pushes them front and center.

The rest of this post is at Search Engine Land. Here’s Rich Skrenta’s extensive post on why they did this.
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This is a big bet on local and community. On the monetization front, Topix has free classifieds and AdSense.

Blog Search Now ‘Reputation Management’

Loren Baker posts on new “social media meta search engine” Serph, which does what the old Intelliseek/BlogPulse (now part of Nielsen BuzzMetrics) does: tracks “buzz” and discussion online.

Blog search engines theoretically can track “buzz” and what’s being said about companies/individuals. But what’s interesting to me is the marketing spin that repositions a blog search engine into a “reputation management” system or tracker. As I’ve written in the past, reputation management is an emerging challenge for companies large and small as user-generated content explodes.

What we’re seeing possibly here is the birth of a cottage industry. I had a long conversation yesterday with a Red Herring reporter about this issue and reputation management for individuals online.