Back when the internet was gaining huge amounts of users at the turn of the millennium, everything was about the World Wide aspect. But now, it’s worn a little thin. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still useful and connects people and companies all over the planet. But local search is where there are big bucks to be made. Think about it, aren’t you more likely to click on an advertisement when it’s a 20% discount for the Chinese restaurant around the corner, instead of an offer for the Chinese HiPhone?
All the major online services have caught on with Twitter being the latest having launched Local Trends. Now, Buzz.com looks to catch in on the local .com boom. At the minute it’s still in Beta testing. But more and more tech blogs are talking about it.
While Buzz.com will rely heavily on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, At&T have stressed that they have not built a social networking site, although you will be able to share many things with friends and family. By indexing what people are talking about as well as working with companies and advertisers, buzz.com will provide people will accurate search results for things like clubs, restaurants, shops, deals and much more. It’s like social media for local businesses.
I can’t wait until Buzz comes out of private Beta. It sounds like a great service to get the skinny on what’s going on in your locale. If you want to try your luck at getting a private invitation, click here.
Want to know the best places to go or businesses to call? Let buzz.com help you tap your social net for business recommendations from the people you trust most – your friends and family. – Buzz.com
More and more people around the world are signing up to Twitter. The service is constantly updating and releasing new features. ‘Lists’ which launched towards the end of 2009 hasn’t really taken off that much but I think Local Trends might just.
Basically, you have the option to take the current trending topics and make it more localised. So if there’s something happening in America which is of no relevance to your area, it won’t be displayed in your Trending Topics because people from your area won’t be tweeting about it. Obviously, big global events such as the Haiti disaster or G8 meetings will attract attention from all over the world, but localised Trending topics can get quite annoying. Twitter sums it up as follows:
“Twitter trends began as a way to shed light on popular conversations. It’s interesting to know that one topic can now spread across the world in real-time, and Trends help us discover which of those topics are paramount on a global scale.”
“The big events that come up around the world will always become a global conversation, but what about the big events that only happen in your world that only matter to those around you? Or the slight differences in the way Californians perceive an event, like Obama’s election victory, versus those São Paulo, Brazil?” said @jennadawn on the Twitter blog. today.
They also say that the new feature will be monitored and improved through their API and via feedback. Nice to know Twitter cares about small European and Asian countries, as well as the North American market. Also, if you happen to live in a big country such as the US or France, you can localise the feature further by selecting cities instead of countries!
No I know what most of you are thinking, why the hell isn’t this an iPhone app or why hasn’t Apple done this already, well they should have! The Next Web is reporting on a new app that is really going to help.
It’s an awesome app in Cydia called “Categories” which lets you organise your apps into folders. The app provides an array of different icons you can use, you can easily rename folders via the app and adding/removing apps is relatively easy. However, this is not available in the app store and you need to have your iPhone jailbroken.
Currently, on my iPod touch I have over 5 pages worth of applications that I use on a monthly basis. At the moment I’m having so much trouble keep track of the apps and actually arranging them so they can be easily used and organised. Apple needs to come up with an app like this, either that or they need to be able to arrange your apps directly in iTunes.
One limitation: the app doesn’t recognise iPhone web apps only genuinely local apps.
As I noted above, this is only for Jailbroken iPhones. Other features which Cydia (jailbroken app database) brings is copy & paste, 5 apps in the dock amongst hundreds of others.
