1. 1
Opportunities with Real-time
Local Search and Content

2. Rise of the Real-Time Web
Pushing information to users as soon as
it's available
Implemented in social networks, search,
news, etc. - more like instant messaging
Users interaction in real-time as well
Benefit: increased user engagement
Will likely become ubiquitous, a
requirement for almost any website or
service.
Source: ReadWriteWeb

3. A World of Tweets
Source: http://aworldoftweets.frogdesign.com/

4. Multitude of Real-Time Content Sources
Twitter
Facebook’s public activity stream
Linkedin updates
Location data (Foursquare, Facebook Places, etc.)
YouTube videos
Wikipedia updates
Blog posts
News media articles
Searches / clicks / calls
Other social media sites like MySpace, Delicious,
StumbleUpon and Digg

5. Nowism: What it Means
Content: unheard scale and scope (user
participation)
Consumers are looking for instant
gratification (real-time products,
services and experience)
Business intelligence: in your face
Conversations: become part of it,
engage and initiate conversations (join
the “now”)
Source: Trendwatching

6. Global Brain and Online Pulse
Consumers: “A truly real-time snapshot of what the
world is thinking, doing, protesting (if not fighting) for
and against, loving, reviewing, buying, feeling,
attending, traveling to, donating to, gossiping about,
asking for, hating, wearing, watching, eating, reading,
drinking, listening to...”
Businesses: “A world of real-time customer service,
real time offers, real-time product and advertising
testing, real-time Q&A, real-time feedback, real-time
co-creation.”
Source: Trendwatching,

7. (Partially) Blame Mobile

8. How is real-time search and
content used today?

9. Google Instant
Google now predicts
search queries and
begins serving up
results as searchers
type, reducing the
amount of time it takes
to perform a search.
Saves more than 3.5
billion seconds a day.
That’s 11 hours saved
every second.

10. Google Realtime

11. Google Shared Link Information
Source: Newsgrange, http://newsgrange.com/?p=2195

12. Bing Social
“Liked” results from Facebook friends
Real-time search results
Source: http://www.discoverbing.com/facebook

13. Content Aggregation
Curated content
Curated lists
Huffington Politics
Twitter edition
Collecta feed

14. Live Event Coverage
Live tweeting and live blogging
Coveritlive

15. Real-Time Location-Based Services
Experimental Real-Time Location
Tracking on Google Latitude on Android
Mayor Maker iPhone app

16. Natural Disasters
Earthquakes
US Geological
Survey developed
a Twitter-based
earthquake
detection system
Source: ecopolitology.org
“Seismologists say Twitter could be the fastest way to
get information out of an earthquake area, especially in
those less densely populated with seismic instruments.”

17. Political Trends
2010 US Midterm Elections
Source: New York Times, “The Election Will Be Tweeted (and Retweeted)”, October 2010

18. Allocating Resources: News Media
“Because of technology that can pinpoint
what people online are viewing and
commenting on, how much time they
spend with an article and even how
much money an article makes in
advertising revenue, newspapers can
make more scientific decisions about
allocating their ever scarcer resources.”
Source: New York Times, “Some Newspapers, Tracking Readers Online, Shift
Coverage”,September 5, 2010

19. What does real-time means for directory
publishers?
1

20. New Local Content
Need structured real-time local content
Think headings / business names /
brands / services / questions & answers /
etc.
Think classification / structuring / natural
language processing / linguists
Make it relevant for your users

21. Real-Time Activities
Display your own activities
Millions of searches, clicks, views, calls,
driving directions every month
Your sites are extremely alive but they
look dead

22. Real-time Product Inventory
Product & brand names
National advertisers with local presence
Holy grail: local merchant inventory

23. Reputation Management
The process of tracking actions,
mentions, opinions, discussions about a
merchant
Reporting on those actions and opinions
Sentiment analysis
Reacting to that report creating a
feedback loop.
Source: Wikipedia

24. Real-time Business Opportunities
Identifying business opportunities in
social media
Heading-based needs / life events that
trigger Yellow Pages usage
“Can anyone recommend...”
Interact
Report

25. Data Mining to Influence Search Results
Determine trends, before they happen
Gauge demand of products / services on
a day to day basis.
Serving the right result at the right time

26. Yield management
The process of understanding,
anticipating and influencing consumer
behavior in order to maximize revenue
or profits from a fixed, perishable
resource
What does yield management look like in
a Yellow Pages environment?
Are searches a “perishable resource”?
Optimal allocation of leads? Dayparting?

27. You are Data Companies
Don’t believe what you’ve heard
Directory companies are data companies
You have 10+ years of local search
history
Mine your data
You can probably use this to improve
people’s lives (and solve the time
crunch!)

28. BUT: This is not only about real-time
This is about “time”
This is about the temporal Web

29. Why is the Temporal Web Important?
“We have unlimited space
(inventory) on the Internet but
limited time.”
Steve Rubel, Edelman Digital

30. Source: tro-fodo-tiko.blogspot.com

31. Merci!
Sébastien Provencher
Co-founder, Praized Media
www.needium.com
sprovencher@needium.com
http://blogs.praized.com/seb
http://twitter.com/sebprovencher