February 27, 2006
“geo-localization of tags”
Jon Husband, of “Wirearchy” fame made an interesting point recently in the gapingvoid comments:
Blogging will get much more *local* in the next few years, in my opinion, in a range of interesting ways, and then one of the questions will be how to get global microbrands to become more effective and responsive on the local level and in local ways.
This issue may become, for blogging, the equivalent of the *centralization / decentralization* pendulum swing issue that larger organizations continually re-visit as their markets or the org’s capabilities change.
Watch for geo-localization of tags.
Thoughts?
Yes, it always comes back to local, that’s why Google, Yahoo, and MSN have improved their Local Search and format search for cell phones. Perhaps the rule is “Global microbrands scale, but real people don’t, but you got to be somewhere.”
Yes, it always comes back to local, that’s why Google, Yahoo, and MSN have improved their Local Search and format search for cell phones. Perhaps the rule is “Global microbrands scale, but real people don’t, but you got to be somewhere.”
Yes, it always comes back to local, that’s why Google, Yahoo, and MSN have improved their Local Search and format search for cell phones. Perhaps the rule is “Global microbrands scale, but real people don’t, but you got to be somewhere.”
Yes, it always comes back to local, that’s why Google, Yahoo, and MSN have improved their Local Search and format search for cell phones. Perhaps the rule is “Global microbrands scale, but real people don’t, but you got to be somewhere.”
Two months ago, I started tagging some of my posts “Bellingham.”
Mostly because my home town has this imense civic pride that’s really difficult for me to schluff off. So I stopped trying to avoid it.
Despite a lot of commotion in the academic world about the internationalization of tags, I agree that their biggest power is local, or at very least, culturally similar places.
I’m still hoping for a time where tags and search combine better.
Didn’t I say this last week?
But since Hugh says local is not as “sexy” as global how about “glocal microbrands” or “lobal microbrands”
Hm.… You would need a lot of stormhoek to make those roll off your tongue.
–Jack
Then the killer marketing move is to pick a locale and brand it into little tiny pieces, creating splinter brands, many smaller blogs and RSS feeds that caputure a local flavor, and then aggregating them into a pastiche of the locale. Bonus if the locale is not already online. Bonus if the locale already has an international appeal. Bonus if you happen to live in New Orleans.
I’ll say this about local… if your GMB is based on physical products and/or custom work, like mine, local helps. I’ve sold a *lot* of my Great Bowl O Fire firepits thanks to the blog. But almost all of the bowls that sold off the blog were the ones I was able to deliver personally.
I had email from an interested buyer in Calgary today who wanted to know what they freight would cost to buy one. Before my FedEx freight discount, the shipping cost exceeded the cost of the fire bowl…
That’s a problem local can fix. or I could just start designing *smaller* stuff, I guess. (and I have).
I agree. While the A-list bloggers have the long tail between them and everyone else on the cluetrain, local traditional media like magazines and newspapers have yet to hitch a ride. As more people understand the importance of blogs as sources of information, I think local opportunities for bloggers will open up.
Tagging with place names works pretty well, and people are more likely to get taht right than typing in latitude and longitude.