Yesterday, at the invitation of Greg Sterling (of Sterling Market Intelligence and Screenwerk fame), I spent some time at the Web 2.0 Expo, participating in a panel with a timely name and mission: "Why Local is the New Global." I was joined by some folks who are united in the mission of paving 'the last mile' in local e-commerce: Siva Kumar (TheFind), Scott Dunlap (NearbyNow), and Ethan Stock (Zvents).
Greg set up the session nicely with his recent findings on the online/offline e-commerce dynamic. If you haven't read his recent post on this, you should. His point: most internet users who research products online before purchase subsequently buy offline. So therefore a big chunk of product search is local. I would agree with that - certainly our own research (see here) supports that assertion.
It was a lively panel, with some great questions from the audience, who I hope gained insight into the different and complementary ways these local pioneers are helping consumers find (and buy) local products and services. The Find takes a shopping engine approach that connects buyers with local merchandise (mainly, soft goods); NearbyNow connects shoppers who are looking for a specific product with local retail stores (again, soft goods are the primary focus); while Zvents offers a media network for local search that connects local buyers with both local retailers and events.
One major take-away from this panel is that local content, like water behind a dam, is trying to reach consumers. At a panel just down the hall from us, producers from NPR and current.tv were talking about a major trend in the news business right now: building and promoting APIs that expose their content to partners who can then get it in front of an audience that monetizes it in new ways, and to new audiences. The UK's Guardian recently joined those content creators that are taking this approach - it might be the future of the news business.
For those of us focused on local commerce, a similar trend is emerging: find and package local product/retail/event content, and then expose it to publishers for them to get it in front of those who want to consume it. The pipes and channels that make this happen are not important; after all, people don't buy channels, they buy content. The important thing is to make it easy for the channel operators (publishers, shopping engines, YP operators, mobile app developers) to use this local content in imaginative ways that connect local buyers with the right product, in the right context.
And that's exactly what we're doing with our localization engine, index, API and widget: we're making it easy for consumers, wherever they might be on the web, to connect with local product.
Photo credit: Reuters
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