• iTunes replaced the record store for distribution of Music
• Netflix replaced Blockbuster as the distribution for Movies’s
• Amazon replaced Barnes and Noble as the distrubtion for Books
• People will pay to read content that matters to them - Micropayments or subscriptions to Online News (WSJ, NYT)
• Google is not evil, but blind love of Google will lead to evilness.

I’ve been neglecting my blog here for some time, but I had this saved as a draft and based on many of the conversations I’ve had in the past few days, I felt that this brief thought captured some good points. Content doesn’t come from Google, it comes from people. Some of those people are professional journalists, but many of them now are just regular “Joe 6-Packs.” You and me posting our thoughts, our pictures - all of us out here sharing our lives.

Regardless of where it comes from, Google doesn’t create any of it and its not claiming it does. Google is out organizing information, which is one form of content. And as we grow less mindful of where our content comes from, or even who is creating it, the medium loses its value and we simply consume content in whatever form it appears in front of us. For me, I see the web as finally having caught up and mimicked our physical world experience with word of mouth. Twitter and Facebook have taken an innate human action, word of mouth, and amplified it online. Almost none of the content I consume comes from Google (except when I am seeking specific information).

My point is that content comes from the people around us, and when we watch, listen or read something that is very interesting to us, it doesn’t often matter who made the content - we remember who told us about it, or where we found it. In todays world wide web, where we found it is rarely on Google, it is from within our social network of friends and acquaintances.

I’ve heard something about this social graph idea…

How do large search networks gain their local insight into the real world? Syndication of content from various internet providers, yellowpages, superpages, ultrapages, all kinds of pages. But mostly, out of date pages. Businesses that no longer exist, phone numbers that are no longer valid and addresses that have changed.

How can I the local consumer place my trust in these large companies having up to date, local information on what I am looking for? That is an excellent question, and one that I as a local business man, believe is a question that these jumbo portals don’t have the right answer to.

Smaller, local search companies can monetize their wealth of small business information by expanding paid syndication through these larger outlets. Building a better database of small and local businesses is what these local companies do, and is exactly what they can do for these larger national and international portals.

In these new days of local search, and local information, more and more small business are transitioning their marketing and their budgets online. As this market grows, more information will be available online, and search engines in particular will hold a lot of power over this information. So how can the consumer get the best information infront of them as quickly as possible? Rely on locally based portals who actually operate in the cities they represent.

If there were a way to capitalize on the huge power and reach of these large portals, by incorporating the value of this local information together in a Search Engine Friendly site, giving searching consumers quick and easy access to up to date, accurate and relevant information, this new model would be very valuable indeed.

Now if only I knew someone who could code like a champion…