Think Big, Search Small: The Rise of Local 2.0

For some of us promiscuous digital-ites and urban-ites , we live in a world of two paradoxical notions:

- a digital world that breaks down borders, makes the world flat, allows many knee-deep friendships to flourish, makes human behaviour a little bit more business-like, is pervasive and at our beck and call to digest, consume, communicate, discover share, create, mashup, shop and buy 168 hours per week, wherever and whenever we want to.

and ...

- an offline world and the 50 km circumference around our front doors - the place of deep friendships, of multi-sensory stimulation, of culture, sights and sounds, where we randomly interact with both people we love and the great unwashed - even with its aggravating traffic, regimented work hours and archaic rules (parking cops,  truck drivers that don't watch and hairstylists not open on Mondays are my big peeves this week), this is the most important decision and what governs most of our day to day  life - where we choose to live (contrary to Second Lifers - most of us still like our 1st life much better).

What a powerful combination then when you combine the two worlds together and build local online communities.  They are sprouting up all over the place and playing a healthy role in expanding the boundaries of the 2.0 world. Even my company has started to get in the game (one day when we're ready to launch, we'll talk about GO here).

Whether print or digital, local relevancy of search is still paramount and there's money to made in those hills. Yellow Page directories earn about $30 billion worldwide and in Canada, it has been noted that margins are as high as 58%.

Out of curiousity, what do we look for when we search locally? According to SRI, the 10 most frequently referenced print Yellow Pages headings are:

1) Restaurants, 2) Physicians-Surgeons, 3) Automobile Parts, 4) Automobile Repairing-Service, 5) Pizza, 6) Attorneys-Lawyers, 7) Automobile Dealers, 8) Dentists, 9) Hospitals and 10) Beauty Salons.

For Internet Yellow Pages, the 10 most frequently referenced headings are: 1) Restaurants, 2) Hotels, 3) Physicians-Surgeons, 4) Automobile Dealers, 5) Florists, 6) Automobile Repairing-Service, 7) Automobile Parts-Supplies, 8) Schools, 9) Attorneys-Lawyers and 10) Insurance.

Now the difference is that various digital initiatives are not merely stopping at being a local search directory but building communities and social networks of users around their offerings. Here are just a few of my recent stops by Local Online Search Communities:

In Canada, Our Faves
In the U.S., Yelp.com in 27 cities
In the U.S.,  Insiderpages.com in 30 cities
In the U.S., Yahoo Local
In the U.S., just recently launched CityVoter
In the U.S, CitySquares
In the U.K., TouchLocal - 114 cities in the U.K., talking in 8 million U.K. pounds
In the U.K., Trusted Places
In Australia, Loco Nut

Add in some inspiration from some national shopping 2.0 sites:

ThisNext

 StyleHive

Crowdstorm

Kaboodle

MyPickList

FiveLimes

Wists

ProductWiki

Karl Long has a great post on why social media is beginning to domiante the local scene, much like Flickr killed Webshots in the photo game and Wikipedia trounced Encyclopedia Britannica in the reference game, these local 2.0 sites are making the likes of Yellow Pages and Citisearch irrelevant and out of touch.