To my knowledge only a small number of us have been closely tracking the Local Social Media intersection for a few years.  But since Dylan and I organised  the first Local Social Summit, it feels like the world has taken notice and Local Social is going mainstream.

The Week that was in Local Social

Below, are some of the main stories from last week that caught my attention.

Yelp gets funding of $100 million.  My opinion is that this funding was the plan all along and Yelp played Google to get a solid valuation: a dangerous game to be playing.  Greg Sterling interviewed Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman to get some more details on where that money will be going.  As the PR on the investment came out during the Apple iPad launch, Henry Blodget’s harsh headline was:  Yelp Wins Award For Dumbest Funding-Announcement Timing Ever.

AT&T to launch buzz.com.  From what I’ve read, sounds like it’s geared towards mobile and is a standard Local business ratings services with a question function, tied into a friends and family social graph.  What I like about this is that it’s innovation from an old school telco.

Twitter has rolled out Local Trends to everyone (& the API).  The obvious point is that 3rd party innovation will make something interesting out of this.  One possible use is utilising the Local Trends as a solid data source for BI over Local information to determine requirements for things like:  Emergency Services and Content.

Citysearch launches openweb distribution to Local content and ads.  This is a smart play and one the traditional IYPs or those with heavy destination site content and advertisers should be looking to lock down as a move globally.

Facebook are looking at building a Foursquare killer.  Whatever, but what is interesting (both Greg Sterling and Seb Provencher agree on this one) is the comment from Foursquare co-founder, Dennis Crowley, who:

fully expects Facebook and others to launch "check-in" functionality, making it [a] "commodity by the end of the year."

As I’ve said for a few months now, I’m not that interested in the checkin but I believe the checkout is where this trend needs to be heading.  Once that happens, then you’re going to see widespread SMB engagement and things will get interesting in the Local Social games niche.

In Seb Provencher’s required reading deck regarding the Perfect local media company of 2014, which was presented for the first time at Local Social Summit ‘09, checkin is listed as one of the standard features.  You can see the video of that lab session below.

Some more links from last week

• Foursquare’s New Frontier: Newspapers
• Beatbloggers recruited for Guardian Local project
• Localeze To Power Local Business Listings For Bing

Video of the Perfect Local Media Company from Local Social Summit ‘09

Local Social Summit is very excited that Stephen Leighton owner of leading UK coffee roaster, Has Bean, has agreed to come speak at LSS@Social Media Week on 4th February 2010.

We are planning to have a conversation with Steve about how as an artisan coffee roaster he is utilising a proliferation of Social Media channels to build engagement with his customers and the coffee community in general.

In reality, we’re fanboys of Steve (and without saying the amazing coffee Hasbean brings back to the UK) and would be happy if he just comes along and shares his wonderful passion for coffee and with that his direct trade approach with growers (actually, here’s hoping we get some of that because when you think about it, that’s still Local Social).  Regardless of what Steve talks about, our hope is that those who come along to LSS@Social Media Week will agree with us by the end of the evening when we say, we believe Stephen Leighton is coffee’s rising answer to Gary Vee.

To get a taste of why we think that, here’s a video from In My Mug, Steve’s weekly video show:

To fully get an understanding of how Steve is using Social Media in furthering the success of Hasbean, we suggest you:

• Read his blog
• Follow him on Twitter
• Check out the photo stream on Flickr
• Watch episodes of In My Mug or check out the Hasbean Vimeo channel
• Not forgetting the Hasforum

You can read more about the LSS@Social Media Week event by clicking here.  Go to the eventbrite microsite or start the booking process below:

We have now posted up most of the videos that we took at LSS ’09 on our YouTube channel – 34 videos in total so far which is over 5 hours of quality video – http://www.youtube.com/localsocialsummit.

Please note that some of the ‘credit’ screens are not complete and are missing some of the names of panelists. There should be full details within  the description on YouTube or you can view the final LSS ’09 agenda here – http://www.localsocialsummit.com/lss/final-agenda/.

Here’s a list of the sessions currently on YouTube:

• Session 1 – Parts 1 to 5: Keynote Presentation – Decoding Generation Y – Who really has digital friends? – Robert Barnard, Founder of Decode
• Session 2 – Parts 1 to 6: Panel – Social Media Marketing  – The Rules are Changing
• Session 3 – Panel – Mobile – The Future of Apps is Bright. Panel 3 videos are not up yet, should be ready in a the next couple of days:.
• Session 4 – Parts 1 to 5: Afternoon Keynote – Making sense of the networked audience: The case of Facebook – Dr. Bernie Hogan is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute.
• Session 5 – Parts 1 to 5: Panel – Local Gets Social – The Impact of User Generated Content and the Promise of Real-Time Search
• Session 6 – Parts 1 to 9: Panel – Local Content & Monetisation – A View from  Europe
• Session 7 – Parts 1 to 4: Lab: What does the Perfect Local Media Company Look Like in 5 Years Time

No videos of the Hitwise Goes Postal presentation.  But you can watch and listen to this as a great Webinar here – https://admin.na6.acrobat.com/_a799316515/p44796378/.

Also, no video of the The Opportunity of Social Media presentation but the slide deck is available here – http://www.slideshare.net/LocalSocialSummit/lss09-the-opportunity-of-social-media-amino-tech.

Suggested highlights from the YouTube videos include:

From Session 4 parts 1 and 2. Part 1 is what I am calling the “death of distance” segment and Part 2 which is the “paradox of conveince” segment.

• Session 4, part 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxXBJnJAatk
• Session 4, part 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bz9EuGzLYM

From Session 5 parts 2 and 3 as this is where we start to get an interesting  debate around both the definition and value of real-time search.

• Session 5, part 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-E3ydmxQ-8
• Session 5, part 3 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n75qbjAP_9M

More about the real-time search debate (what is it and is it useful for local-social) can be found here on Search Engine Land and Screenwrek.