Blog redesign

I'm slowly creaking my way through a redesign of the blog over the next few days, largely to make more room for my twitter posts which are far more frequent and up-to-date than some of the longer articles... things have been very busy of late!

If you spot anything broken or have any suggestions then please let me know.

Thoughts on Local Social Summit 2009

Last week I attended the first Local Social Summit in London - a day aimed at exploring the space where local content meets social media with attendees from a range of start-ups, directories, media companies, advertisers and media owners.

If you're interested in any of this type of stuff then all of the days presentations are available on SlideShare.

The two most insightful keynotes of the day were on a related theme - the impact and usage of social networking sites in comparison to how people, particularly the young, conduct their social lives in the 'real world'.

The first, 'Decoding Friends: A Generation Y View' by Robert Barnard was a research based piece with some interesting numbers:

• 15-29 year olds have an average of 43 online 'friends' based on recent research in UK, US and Canada.
• Only 12% have more than 70 online friends
• Numbers of face-to-face and online friends varies through different stages in life, whereas 'phone friends' remains fairly constant.

LSS'09 Keynote Decoding Friends

View more documents from Local Social Summit.

Following this, Bernie Hogan, a PhD from University of Oxford, presented 'Making Sense of the Networked Audience: The Case of Facebook' which provided some different numbers but similar conclusions:

• A list of 12 reasons why someone might become an online friend with another individual
• "Nearness is now a social property as much as a spatial one"

LSS'09 Keynote Decoding Friends

View more documents from Local Social Summit.

There was plenty of interesting discussion throughout the day and a chance to hear how a diverse range of companies are all moving into the local/social space looking for new revenue stream.

Some particular points of interest from the day:

• "Obama had the same percentage of votes from young people as Bill Clinton - don't overestimate social media"
• Heavy social network users are more likely to use newspapers and are more interested in local news than international.
• MapZen - a free iPhone app coming soon from CloudMade that allows users to easily add points of interest to openstreetmap.
• Yellix - a mobile app to help phone calls, e.g. Live directory look-up of unknown caller numbers so no more unknown callers.

And if you haven't heard about Flutter then you should take a look now:



My input involved a 5 slide presentation on the BBC's local services, a reflection that BBC Local Radio started doing local-social over 40 years ago, and then a lively panel debate on how local do you need to be to be effective and finding the right balance between content providers and content aggregators.

@straight2tpoint Twitter feed

After months of confusing my non-work friends with local media postings from my @jthornett twitter account I thought I'd set up a new feed based around this blog and all things related to local media and location services.

The most recent tweets from @straight2tpoint are now displayed on the right hand side of this blog but please follow me on Twitter if you want to keep right up to date.

It still feels slightly schizophrenic to have two different versions of me on the web but hopefully it will make information updates and conversation more focused and relevant to the right audience - or maybe it will all go horribly wrong, let's find out!

The Perfect local Media Company in 2014

Tomorrow's Local Social Summit '09 in London promises to be an interesting and thought provoking day.

I'm speaking in a panel discussion on Local Content & Monetisation although coming from the BBC angle my focus will be more on local content and social opportunities rather than commercial monetisation.

Some key questions I'd like to discuss include:

• How local is local? What level of localness is most effective?
• How will the market find the right balance between content providers and content aggregators?
• The web makes the whole world social, so when does local matter?

The final item of the day will be hosted by Praized’s Seb Provencher and is titled, What does the Perfect Local Media Company Look Like in 5 Years Time.

The slides make for an interesting read and ask some really good questions... I'm looking forward to the session.

The Perfect Local Media Company Sebastien Provencher Lss 09 Presentation November 2009 Final

View more documents from Media Viking.

Guardian Local due for 2010 launch

The Guardian have announced a move into the provision of local news on the web in 2010 with the launch of Guardian Local in three UK cities.

Sarah Hartley, the Guardian local launch editor said:

"While researching developments at the grassroots of community journalism, I've been impressed by the range and depth of coverage from local websites and blogs. This experimental project reflects both the shifting nature of journalism and the reality on the ground."

Recruitment is now underway to find professional bloggers (job title: Beatblogger) to work on the three initial services in Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh.

The successful candidate will be a confident blogger, know their yelps from their tweets, have a passion for local news and understand how to build relationships with the local community. A journalism qualification is desirable but not essential.