Today was a very exciting and exhausting day. Introducing some new people to the site, adding some great people to the team. Its amazing. Welcome to 2009.

I have an interesting perspective on what I’m doing. I learned my tricks from battling in the streets. When I first started I walked the streets with a blue  paper folder (the kind with the pockets), print outs from Word with a description of my new website.

“Thats, great kid. Let me know when someone else is on it.” - Ok

I learned that small businesses don’t really care about the internet. They dont care about SEO, they don’t care about fancy algorithms and pre-roll ads. They care about getting customers in their door and making them happy. I learned quickly that if you can make marketing easy for them they will listen. I learned that if you could show them new customers at a lower CPA than the local paper, they would not only listen - they would buy.

I have great idea’s everyday, I have a really great idea in my head right now and I know its 6-10 months away from happening.  In the past few weeks I got my girlfriend to start blogging, I think she finally understands how Twitter is cool and she even set up and iGoogle page this weekend. My parents have a computer in the kitchen (you have no idea about my parents - whats facebook?). People are using the internet to find things they need. - But of course they are Jamie! - Yes, but now they’ve realized they can find all kinds of crazy things they need on the internet easier than with their (insert non web-based tool). There are so many great things to do out there, the internet is going to explode when this economy recovers.

People aren’t leaving their neighborhoods like they used to. And if they are they are planning their trip from their desk, via the internet. They are searching for local businesses, for location specific activites and destination related things to do. This is what we mean by local. This is why Google introduced its OneBox (those bastards!) and its why everyone and their mother is started the latest and greatest local search site.

Well I didn’t figure out local was cool last quarter. I didn’t notice people were starting to ramp up local searches in June, not even of ‘07. I’m not telling you 2009 is going to be “the year of local” [trumpets sound]. But I am loving it. Loving the buzz, loving 2009 trend predictions from J.P. Morgan and Barclays. Loving the fact that a small company from Boston is dominating a huge billion dollar company with an almost identical name because its thinking small.

I’ll leave you with this, because you’re probably in the same game I am somehow or another. So cheers:

Internet activity continues to increase as the medium plays a more significant role in people’s lives, and this increased usage and dependence should leave Internet companies well-positioned when the macro environment improves.

- Barclays’ Doug Anmuth

I think 2D barcodes are so cool. As a marketer I am truly excited about the ability to quickly and easily capture an offline impression into a measurable transition online. Its a great way to get relevant data about how often my marketing is reaching a targeted person. Just as powerful as a Click-Through in my mind, only not online.

As a publisher, I’m excited to see this technology become commonplace and be used to validate buys and placement.

As a person, I think it would be intriguing to point and shoot at a barcode for a movie ad and watch the trailer on my phone right there. Or see and ad for 30% off that thing I was thinking about buying this week and buy it right now. There are some pretty cool mobile apps out there now that are doing similar things with actual barcodes. Oooh, imagine when that gets semantic….

We are working on developing an entirely new pricing structure, from the sales materials to the training to the handling of new and recent prospects to the web architecture that facilitates it. Whole new focus, which I’m very excited about. So far this month its taken on very well.

What I’m curious about is how other companies my size are handling the current economic climate. From a general downturn, to the burgeoning online economy. I’ve been hearing alot about some other startups in our field and laugh and wonder about some of their statements.

There’s alot going on in the local search market, and its only going to get more packed. Its a very exciting time to be involved in local, and we are getting after it.

Time will tell who will make it to the “next level”

I came across a few new interesting things this weekend. Here’s a quick overview as I’ve got a busy day and I’m stealing time right now…

Outside.in (http://outside.in/) Outside.in is an interesting example of aggregating local news and information. I discovered some new things happening in Providence, that I wasn’t aware of. It does a pretty good job of collecting different stories from different perspectives and on a variety topics, all focused around local. It does not, however, do a particularly good job facilitating an experience in Providence beyond the discussions being had on their page. Again, their revenue model seems to be based on supplying relevant content and serving your standard skyscraper ads from national brands (that don’t seem to be well targeted).

They claim to have discussions on 11,860 towns and neighborhoods on their site, but most of them seem to be large towns/cities in the Northeast / West Coast. (nothing new there). Anyway, an interesting take on local and I’m intrigued to see where they take it or what I can learn from it.

NY Times Mobile Real Estate: I noticed this ad on the back page of the Business section this morning as I was reading with my coffee. It basically allows you to text the number of a listing in the NYT to their number and it sends you back more details and a link to that listing’s mobile site. I tried it out, but the first listing I sent returned “We’re sorry but that listing is not available in NYT Mobile,” I tried it again and voila! it sent me the name of the property, the location of the property, the price, the listing agent and a link to the mobile site for that listing. The link took me a mobile site about the listing, and had every little detail I could want about the property (photos, taxes, schools, etc).

I think its a somewhat cool implementation of mobile for the NYT, however its not very out of the box. I am still tied to looking up these listing numbers either in print or on their website. A better and perhaps more useful application would be to incorporate location based services into this app and have it feed you back listings in your area. I walk to Chelsea and say, “I want to live here” and the NYT (or anyone else) tells me what is available literally in this area.

Those are my thoughts for the morning, what do you think?…

I spent this absolutely beautiful weekend in NYC. My college roomate’s 25 birthday party Friday night, and an afternoon and evening of exploring the upper east side with my girlfriend. Almost everything we did was facilitated by my mobile device (Verizon BlackBerry 8830). I love this phone, its my second BlackBerry and a HUGE upgrade from my last.

Regardless of the device, we used it for just about everything we did (even a bit of navigating in Central Park). On the train we read about a dozen different reviews to get a sense for what we were in for. We used its GPS functions to give us directions to the Club we went to Friday night (Azza @ 55th and Lex), after we got in the cab. Saturday, we looked up the Pope’s schedule using the browser (yes we saw him in the flesh, along with his 4 block motorcade). Then we found an excellent Brasserie on 79th Street using the Google Maps App. As we waited for our food, we looked at a Map of Central Park to figure out the best path for where we were heading (Belvedere Castle - man what a beautiful day). On our way home, we looked up Movie Showtimes.

The point of this story is that in the past 48 hours I used a mobile device to facilitate 3 transactions, and to find and research essential information that I otherwise would have had to look up prior to leaving my apartment. Each one of those was an opportunity for an advertiser to reach me, while I was interested, while I was about to make a purchasing decision, literally at that moment. How valuable would it have been to the Brasserie across the street from the one I found online? - $38. How much was it worth to Azza to get us there and not have us stop somewhere else? - way more than $38.

Why are people still so bearish about mobile? Nearly everyone in NYC has a mobile device capable of using the internet, millions of people are purchasing them everyday, and the state of Mobile in Japan and in Europe is way ahead of ours. And the Instant return for advertisers must be so appetizing to marketers.

The iPhone, BlackBerries, and all the new broadband capable mobile devices are facilitating easier access to valued information via the mobile web. Once marketers figure out how to reach this growing base of mobile users (which they are beginning to , see Amazon), its going to get hot. And quickly. Mobile has to be the next arena of growth, because everyone else is doing it.

Almost everything I do, I use my mobile device to help me do it better or faster. I read the news, blogs and email. I get directions to my appointments and meetings, I get the latest scores on demand.

There is so much that I do that I am transitioning to my phone. Remember when people started transitioning to the web? I see that happening with mobile.

Local search is entirely too fragmented.

Searching for a restaurant can be time consuming, boring, and down right frustrating. Local guide sites are just not up to speed with the pace of the internet, and many are way behind. I want to find menus, dress codes, price ranges, and interior shots of potential restaurants.

I am planning a trip with my girlfriend to visit my grandmother in Wilmington, NC. Now I wasn’t expecting much of a restaurant guide, but even so I was disappointed. There is no concise guide, there is no focused listing page. Different sites had different listings for the same restaurants - it was a disaster. Of course Wilmington is not the social capital of North Carolina, but it is home to about 65,000 people. What do these people do? There wasn’t anything resembling a thought out online guide to things happening in the area.

Of course this is what I do for a living so I can be picky.

Our next stop on our road trip, my birthplace, Hilton Head Island, SC. There was a glimpse of hope here as we found one site - hhidining.com. Upon closer inspection this was merely a half baked attempt by a local magazine to transition online. It succeeded about as well as anything done half heartedly usually does.

Here lies the fundamental problem, how do we aggregate all of the local information that is scattered across different mediums, in a variety of locations on and off the web, all across the country. Local is so fragmented and there is only so much you can do using a nationally built database of local businesses (see any form of online yellowpages) and there are several companies that focus completely on syndicating their local information.

Second to the fundamental question (how do we aggregate), how do you monetize this information effectively. Do you use a local salesforce, in the streets calling on these businesses? Or do you attempt to build traffic organically and use advertising and lead generation/affiliate programs to produce revenue? Well we’ve seen several companies (read: any version of the yellowpages) try to use the latter method (search for local restaurants and you will more often than not find Chili’s and other franchise ads). They serve large, intrusive ads all over the page, and generally do an ok job of listing local restaurants. Out of date listings often find their way into these pages.

There are very few businesses focusing on local search in mid-size markets. But is this because the markets are not ready for local online? Possibly, however I don’t believe that to be the case. I believe it is the issue of local businesses (existing media entities - mostly print) not understanding the value of local search. How do local papers leverage the value of their online properties? Most often, simply not well.

The point to this ramble is a basic question: What is holding people back from expanding into all of these untapped markets? There is surely value here, and eyeballs from these captured searchers have inherent value of there own. Small businesses are now craving concise online guides to their small cities, more and more businesses are transitioning their ad budgets online, and there are more internet users than ever before. But who is to create these guides and profit from their value…

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…