Giving Local Business and Voice in Age of Yelp

From Project VRM

Creating Deep, True, sustainable local business Doyoupokem.com

Julian is building a startup to build sustainable local community relationships for businesses.

Targeting them because by day they are the business and by night they are individuals

I’m trying to build an interchange in the local community

Niche boutiques, local businesses Keep things personal

Figure that if the locals buy into it than the larger may want to do it

Smaller companies have been left behind

And the world has been reduced to the first page of google

SEO-fights… e.g.

Company is called Locamotiv

Considering two clouds – User/members public people

Other is small businesses

Want to build a light-weight publishing platform for small businesses to publis into the individual’s cloud.

Yelp! doesn’t do this. It gives the users a way to publish about a business but doesn’t give the business a chance to respond

Q: is it conversational? Because places like Yelp! or epinions is trying to make conversations into transactions… This seems to be about returning it to conversations.

We want to blur the line between the community and the businesses. A key part of it as part of the business is the encouragement of local businesses to promote one anothers participation.

The iPhone becomes interesting because it knows where you are and can provide some rich data for input and minding

“Become a local through your own interaction”

Community is a malleable term. And there may not be a way to define it

Rebuttal-some communities are well defined and permanent

And can be defined by having its own currency…

The example is the Berkshares… which trade at $.95 per Berkshire.

It is cash only… Which means you are forced to spend it locally.

Which is an extremely liquid loyalty program

It has kept large corporations out.

10,000 people in Great Barrington

So the currency has become the catalyst to create the cloud… You can say “if you use the Berkshares, you can have 5% off on Wednesdays

It creates two clouds, the merchant cloud

Getting banks involved was crucial and will become the mechanism for promoting other stuff.

There is $150,000 Berkshares in circulation and about $3mm has gone through the system since late 2006

This is the largest local currency in the country, but it’s “nominal” compared to money going through the system

It’s not about coupons – because that’s not a conversation and it’s not personal

So the self-describing community depends on “layers of metadata” when overlaid defines the community.

Observation – there’s no reason it couldn’t be independent of community… For example you could have it around people and supporters of Hallal … they are self defined and they can be supported.

If you take money out of it, you’re talking about a system to hold value and exchange value as agreed upon by a community.

Q: could it be intent, or you complaining to me about a product… It’s something of value to me.

A: So it could be local reputations as well.

You want it to be evolving, honest, open and the best that it can be. So that it can become the mechanism for recommending the good local businesses.

A: you need to organize information so that you can do business in your local community

Other observation – you can get people to share expertise… e.g. when you do a project at home, it might take three trips to the hardware store… But instead you could communicate with friends and neighbors

E.g. could be using technology to show a picture of the thing you need before you get out there to buy something.

Q: are you just shortening the process where someone does research online for “what they want” and then where to get it more cheaply.

Back to local currency… challenges are “not enough local sourcing” but local currency encourages local business. For example issuing micro-loans

Q: Have you read “When Things Begin to Think”? There’s a chapter called “When Currency Has Behavior”.

Comment – Switzerland has its own currency in the midst of the territory of the Euro… But it is not led by smaller companies, it’s led by specialists (e.g. furniture makers)…

In Switzerland, there’s a B2B currency (the Wir) that is used to pay for some 20% of construction…

National currency is wonderful because it works everywhere.

Need to have a way to discover what the locals buy.

I like the notion of finding “non-corporate” in a local community.

Info from the Locale is not online, it’s from the Locale.

This could be very fashionable… to have people seek out local (Big thing in France)

Another area is around Community Supported Agriculture… (CSA) and it often includes a certain amount of work.

Eg. Is in Alameda where the local store keeps track of where the food comes from.

Another notion is “Drop off point”

Open Money is another model based on reputation and that sort of thing.

Go to www.openmoney.info

In France, it’s like Post Restant

Another aspect is services – which are the ultimate perishable product. E.g. not just hairdresser… but computer repair.

Local has been killed because search is reduced to the first page of Google responses.

Observation – we are talking about this like nerds who always have a laptop or smartphone … what about something like a kiosk.

A: Today’s research is showing that “regular people” are buying iPhones and they are using it as a single source of info, entertainment and really a laptop replacement.

Asa Hardcastle and Gam are developing products around local. Iain is building a service called Wedgecartd to “protect the small business” as a way to reinvent loyalty card

There’s also a LosePound movement in UK to rid the world of the BPS

Asa: one of the key components is the ability to have granular data being driven by small businesses, users in the community and non-profit that can be subscribed to by the larger businesses or sites (like Travelocity so they can reflect local knowledge.

The only way they can do that is to protect the local granular data and put it up for sale.

This is the opposite of what happened to natives originally.

The Transition Town movement is cited here

A wrench in the works – “My Local is global” because I have interests in local information in specific areas … Spain, Chicago, etc.

Yes… That’s true, but there’s a difference between the local, where you live and the local information from remote areas. But local services should be a rich basis for collaboration and improving local life.

Also local businesses can’t benefit so much from AdWords or AdSense… But they can pitch word of mouth… But maybe they can afford Coffee and their Zip code (A: then Starbucks would buy that too)

Powerful thing could be self description.

Another powerful thing surrounding iPhone is:

Bluetooth for localcasting Bonjour for exchanging address info And you can make purchases

We haven’t discussed the Personal Data Store aspect of this. Right now I might have three (on the pc, in the car, in the phone)… So for example

Doing a look up, heading out the door to the car, the system understands my intent and points me to relevant information

Comment – you could link Aroundme database to the local

Also your personal data store could become a mechanism for announcing or publishing what you have available for rental or sharing – tablesaw, plumbing skills.

And then your tag cloud could be the ultimate public, personal data store – available to the community of neighbors.

Also Housing – if you want to move in with like-minded people or rent a spare room to like minded people. You could use this sort of local repository.

Challenge is to encourage information flow. Local businesses don’t

Shop Brooklyn example for Questa

Another area is the “co-working” spaces

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just expose your shopping list online

Social services Childcare Childsafety Etc…

Hard to find on the internet. But worth the legwork.