Posts Tagged ‘New York Times’
Weekend Tidbits and Discovery
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Local Search, Mobile, Mobile Web, Syndication, advertising
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?…
