Amongst a couple of others, I was asked yesterday on Twitter for a recommendation for where to get a decent cup of coffee near Victoria Station.  Influential UK foodie blogger, Young and Foodish, replied with Flat Cap Coffee, which was new to me.  As I’m a burgeoning coffee geek, I decided to add it to the Google Map I’m building to track good coffee bars in London   Here’s where it gets interesting:

Google Search brings back, for me, the Foursquare venue page as first result (see image below):

From going to Foursquare, I get a map, some tips and the official Twitter account @flatcapcoffeeco.

I then go to Google Maps to add it to my map and nothing.  Actually, this is an awful results set

Ok, it’s inconclusive and I’m in a rush but interesting none the less because of the following:

1. Twitter was used for what I call an over the fence request ahead of Search
2. Twitter replied with somewhere I hadn’t heard of and looked good
3. Google hadn’t heard much of it, other than bringing back results from Foursquare, Twitter and Blogs
4. It was nowhere near Google Maps

So, actually I think I’m going to stick with my title as at least in the example Local Social whooped Local Searches ass.  Agree, disagree, got some more examples?

After Bernie completed his talk, Rebuilding the Collapsed Contexts in Social Media, Bernie performed an analysis of the Twitter API using NodeXL to build a network diagram of all the people who had tweeted with the hashtag #smwLDN.

Click on image for full size

To help us understand it, Bernie included the following notes when he sent over the image for us to publish on the Local Social Summit blog.

This is a twitter network of all people who tweeted #smwLDN

People who ended up retweeted or mentioned by at least 4 others have a thumbnail and label. Color means number of followers – red means lots of followers, blue means few followers.

In the center is one big group, linked through several tenuous connections such as Jeremy Jacobs and mediaczar.

In the upper right is another group with stevebridger and 1000heads.

In the bottom are all the small groups of singletons or dyads who tweeted the tag.

The arrows point outwards showing where tweets went as people mentioned or retweeted #smwLDN. Clearly, its paid off for the organizers to be be active in using their own hash tag as smwLDN has the high number of mentions outwards.

All of the nodes that seem to fan out from a single person highlight someone who has a relatively active audience. Some of these people share an audience, too.  SteveBridger and lesanto have a lot of fans incommon (since these fans retweeted or mentioned both of these people).  The same can be said for EEPaul and BernieJMitchell.

But of course, this graph also shows that Twitter is a rather thin medium. Social Media Week London had 16,000 followers, and yet the application only picked up 30 retweets or mentions from them (mazi has most herein with 34,800).

Bernie is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford and we feel lucky to have had him speak so far at two Local Social Summit events.   Amongst other more academic venues, Bernie’s work on Facebook will be featured in the forthcoming “Analyzing Social Media with NodeXL” edited by Derek Hansen, Marc Smith and Ben Shneiderman due in mid-July.

You can find more about Bernie on his Oxford Internet Institute microsite or follow him on Twitter.

Paul has been active in the local+social space for the last five years, which has included creating a pioneering video website introducing city neighbourhoods. Now a digital strategist at Imagination, his recent #sixweeks project used social media tools to challenge basic assumptions about consumer behaviour and saw a number of companies pay him for being their customer.

You can find him on:

• His blog: http://www.paulmccrudden.com
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/crudden
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-mccrudden/0/7b/935

Local Social Summit Speaker Biography Footnote: As set out in this post, our policy is to publish Speaker Biographies as is.

Please feel to comment here, on the LinkedIn group or via Twitter.

Local Gets Social – The Impact of User Generated Content and the Promise of Real-Time Search

With the increase of local sites that feature user generated content and in particular reviews plus the real-time nature of platforms such as Twitter, consumers now have access to unprecedented amounts of local information. In this panel we will explore many  questions.  Do we risk information overload for consumers? What is the promise of real time search? How is the power of word of mouth being used by consumers? What are the challenges for publishers, advertisers and in particular local business owners? We will also explore new business models and opportunities that have been generated by UGC.
Moderator: Greg Sterling, Internet/Mobile Analyst – Screenwerk
Panel:

• Seb Provencher, Co-Founder Praized Media
• David Ingram, CEO Brownbook
• Sokratis Papafloratos, CEO TrustedPlaces
• Andrew Hunter, General Manager Qype

Please feel to comment here, on the LinkedIn group or via Twitter.

Mobile – The Future of Apps is Bright

This panel is all about apps – in particular social and local apps (and some mapping which is of course a key part of local)… Phones started out as social devices – we made voice calls. Then we had SMS (text) and then email (think Blackberry). Now we have smart phones, iPhones and Gphones – personal mobile devices. What does the present and future hold for “local social” on Mobile? How does the rise of the iPhone and emergence of Android change the game? We will examine the fast growth of and impact of applications (and app stores). We may also see some wicked demos, discuss new business models and view what an ‘augmented’ real local world might look like.
Moderator: Greg Sterling, Internet/Mobile Analyst
Panel/Demos:

• Felix Petersen, Founder Plazes.com (Nokia)
• Claudia  Poepperl, Founder & CEO at adaffix/Yellix
• James Brown, CTO Cloudmade
• David Pearce, Head of Mobile Services Yell.com
• Miriam Warren, Regional Director Yelp

Please feel to comment here, on the LinkedIn group or via Twitter.

Local Content & Monetisation – A View from Europe

The local media landscape in Europe is unique in many ways and in particular is different to the US market. However, Google still dominates on the search side (both in terms of advertising and traffic volumes) in many European markets and is particularly strong in the UK. Yet Google is also a great source of traffic and revenue for many local publishers. In this panel we examine what makes local media different in Europe.  We will explore how media owners are attracting users and growing traffic. Will look at innovative partnerships and business models. In addition we will discuss what strategies are working for attracting local advertising revenue and look at where growth is coming from 2010 and beyond.
Moderator: Jonathan Ewert, Co-Founder Skepsis Group
Panel:

• Simon Greenman, MD – Online, European Directories
• James Thornett, Executive Product Manager, BBC Local and Location Services
• Ben Barney, Akesios
• Joachim Helfer, Müller Medien
• Roland Bryan, Associated Northcliffe Digital

Please feel to comment here, on the LinkedIn group or via Twitter.

Social Media Marketing  – The Rules are Changing
With the rise of social media and powerful self-publishing tools (Blogger, WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc etc) the conversation between brands and consumers has changed forever. In this session we will explore the new rules and what this means for advertising, marketing and PR. All of which have been changed in a flash and forever. We will also dig into what engagement, the conversation and the attention economy really means for marketers.
Moderator: Mike Weston, VP International wunderloop/Blogger – Sandlines.net
Panel:

• Sokratis Papafloratos, CEO TrustedPlaces
• Paul McCrudden, of the #6weeks project
• Carolyn Watt, Profero
• Nathan McDonald, Managing Partner – wearesocial

David spent around 10 years in traditional business directory firms (Thomson, Scoot, BT) before joining a file sharing startup in 2006 which provided the bridge from traditional publishing to the peer-produced model.

In 1996 he led the development and launch of a mass market e-commerce solution for SMEs at the directory company Scoot, and went on to head up all product management for an international e-procurement company during the early 00s.  He’s consulted on digital asset management products at Sony and on strategies for monetizing BT’s online
directory enquiries service on BT.com.

In 2005 he joined a file sharing start-up to head up product strategy and saw that grow from 3 people to a team of over 30 on both sides of the Atlantic, before starting www.brownbook.net with Marc Lyne in2008.

• Follow David on Twitter: http://twitter.com/daveingram
• Linked in: www.linkedin.com/in/davidingram

Local Social Summit Speaker Biography Footnote: As set out in this post, our policy is to publish Speaker Biographies as is.