Archive for the ‘geobrowsing’ tag
Location, location, location
I ran into Christine Montgomery, managing editor for tampabay.com, my former employer, this past week at ONA, following Amy Web’s presentation. I joked with her that I don’t envy her position of having to make sense of all of the ideas Amy was throwing at us, especially since the common theme of the conference was that despite a lot of creative ideas, few if any have yet arrived at a long-term, sustainable business model. The Las Vegas Sun, who is doing some of the most creative web journalism I saw, describes itself as being in “start-up mode.” A former colleague of mine who now works at a news-related start-up said his employers business model was “TBD.”
A bright spot of the conference, though, were the discussions about “geobrowsing” and services like Where, which enables GPS-enabled searches to find people and places located near you. If I were a local news publisher or editor, this is where I would be focusing my attention. Success for publishing local news (and advertising) is delivering that content at the height of interest, which is heavily determined by one’s location. I want to know why there is police tape outside my house, or which bar near by has the best drink specials. Imagine if I told a publisher I was shopping for shoes, and they could deliver relevant advertising to me based on the mall I was shopping at. The potential is almost unlimited for delivering breaking news, advertising, using staff and user-driven reporting.
Geobrowsing is scary stuff. It looks and feels a little too much like big brother. But if such services were user initiated, where I chose to tell you where I was and what I was looking for, I think publishers could overcome users’ concerns.