E-business Briefing: October 2004

It's a theme I keep returning to - and will continue to do so - because it's important.

Localism - my word for content which is relevant down to the geographically local level - is the new buzz online. Local is where it's literally at.

In fact some years ago Deborah Loth, a UK digital consultant who has worked with numerous advertising, design and public sector agencies since the earliest days of the new media industry, once coined a term to describe the effect of a global Internet player honing its content down to the local level. She called the effect a "glocal" one, and the phrase has stuck in my mind ever since.

Here are a couple of the latest examples to whet your appetite.

The coming together of social software and localism:

Coming out of Germany, Plazes (http://beta.plazes.com/) is a new social software application - currently in beta - which works out where you are geographically based on your IP address. So wherever you pop-up - be it the office, home, or Wi-Fi network somewhere - Plazes will work out how close you are to someone else who has registered their "Plaze" on the site.

It's a kind of Friendster-meets-GPS-meets-instant-messaging application.

The idea is to use Plazes to find specific kinds of locations like hotspots, restaurants, offices based on your current whereabouts or search criteria.

And before you run for the button marked "stalker", you might like to think of the applications in terms of keeping in touch with business contacts or colleagues. It might be used to learn about people at the same trade fair for instance. You can also set yourself to "invisible".

Another location-specific development has been in the portal market.

The official debut of Yahoo! Local (http://local.yahoo.com) has had some US commentators (notably on Poynter.org) wondering whether anbody will ever use a local yellow pages again.

In an Amazon-like fashion you can now even comment on what you think of a local plumber in Wisconsin. Or elsewhere for that matter.

The marketing muscle Yahoo! has must surely mean that a UK version cannot be far away.

Here's one more example of the trend toward localism.

Multimap has teamed up with search giant Google to provide geo-targeted sponsored links on the online mapping firm's public websites.

Users who search for a map, say, in Leeds can now see links to businesses operating in the Leeds area. For the record, Espotting and Overture are also getting into geo-targeting.

Localism is here to stay.

Mike Butcher

mike@mbites.com

- In a major reversal, Sony announced its new digital music players will be compatible with the MP3 format.

- Google's practice of allowing companies to buy keywords that appear when users search for a rival company's products was approved by a German state court.

- Littlewoods teamed up with lastminute.com to supply the online travel retailer with its white label product, WinBack.

- Cable operator ntl bought up the remaining 51% of ISP Virgin.net, ending an eight-year joint venture between the two firms.

- Digital music will represent 8% of the total music market by 2009, but the CD will remain "the bedrock of music sales" in the near future, according to a new report.

- Virgin Group launched a new download service in the US, with plans to roll out a UK service in the future.

- Roger Green, a veteran of the UK's online publishing scene, has been appointed as head of digital media for the UK's second largest regional newspaper publisher.

- Digital sales firm Unanimis secured a new contract with the BBC to provide advertising and sponsorship sales service for the TV listings service Radiotimes.com.

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