Speaking Sensis

You asked for it and now you’ve got it.

From today, you will be able to use White Pages® Online to send Business, Government and Residential listing information to friends on popular social networking sites, blogs and email as the directory expands on its highly successful send to mobile function.

This new functionality is a response to positive user feedback and it lets you tell friends where you saw those great bargains or had the best meal ever.

It also lets us promote our advertiser listings to an even wider audience through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Blogger, Linkedin, Google Bookmarks, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Ping.fm, Wordpress and Friendster as well as email. 

People who list their details with White Pages® Online are already aware that their contact details will be published in the public domain and this sharing of information is something that people can already do via email and SMS etc. However, we are conscious that further sharing of contact information may not always be desired so we have built in some measures to protect privacy, that include:

• phone numbers being shared only when it is sent to your mobile phone;

• only limited contact information being published on social networking sites for residential listings;

• identification of the “from” email address when you send to email and a limit to the number of listings that can be sent to one person each day. There is also a limit to the number of listings one person can send; and

• soon we will enable (next month) the ability to block your mobile number and email address from receiving these messages.

Remember when switched-on websites were the rage? And then do you remember when a hip and happening mobile site was the business? And up until last week, all the discussion was about smart phone apps and now these damn tablets have come along and guess what? We need to adapt to that space too.

And while the battle of the platforms takes place in one corner of the room, in the other there’s this other epic factor that has become as much a part of our day as brushing our teeth – the phenomenon known as social media. 

I could drone on and on about the latest round of growth stats concerning social media networks but it would pretty much tell the same story as it did last year and the year before that. And that is more and more people all over the world, irrespective of gender, age and cultural background, are choosing social networks as a way of staying connected and engaged with communities of friends and interests.

What’s even more interesting is that recently the battle between search (Google) and social (Facebook) has really gone into overdrive.

The growth is really happening in social networks (27.8% week ending 17 October 2009 compared with week ending 17 October 2008*), with search engines growing at the lesser rate of 4.6%.

In other markets monitored by Hitwise, social has already taken over search. And while its only happening sporadically here (ie over the Christmas period), it’s reasonable to expect the same patterns emerge in Australia.

For Citysearch, this paradigm shift is a good thing. 

Each month I’m going to give you the low down on how Citysearch is travelling on the emerging digital frontier. We’ll talk about some of the things we’re doing in the social space, the software space and how we’re handing the developments on the hardware front, too. Some things we’ll do will work really well,  other things won’t pan out the way we wanted them to – which means working through the experience and seeing if we can do things better. And we’ll use this space to share our journey with you. Who knows – our next big thing might come from one of your ideas!

* The Rise and Rise of the Social Network: An Experian Hitwise Asia Pacific Report, November 2009.

It’s easy to get carried away with the excitement surrounding “latest trends”, “new ideas” and “cutting edge” technology. We did it in the dot com boom when all we cared about was what the internet looked like and what it did. The thought of how the internet could make every day tasks easy caused our dial-up modems to run hot with excitement.

What we didn’t do was put a lot of thought into how to monetise it outside existing commercial models and we all know what happened after that.

But after attending the recent ad:tech 2010 conference at Sydney Convention Centre, I believe we are once again on the crest of an exciting new wave of technology and subsequently advertising opportunity.

At ad:tech 2010, it was discussed how connection speeds and mobility were bringing forward new ideas about how to reach and advertise online. And with Australian’s now spending up to one third of our leisure time online, consumers are waiting to be reached.

While online leisure time once meant time spent sitting in front of the computer, it now includes time spent sitting with your smartphone.

Collectively, Facebook users are spending seven hours a month on Facebook, 77 per cent of us read blogs and YouTube has more than 100 million unique visitors a month across the world and growing. In Australia in the past year we have seen Twitter account growth of 1050 per cent. The stats on Twitter usage are mind blowing with Twitter recently reporting that it was seeing 50 million tweets per day — that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.

Driving this growth in usage is mobile access. I know you’re all thinking “here’s another mobile blog post”. But with the launch rate and uptake of new mobile devices, the web is an anytime, anywhere proposition that’s no longer about sitting in the corner on your PC.

Did you know that 4.7 million mobile users around the world accessed Twitter from their mobile browser in January? This represents 347 per cent growth from the 1.05 million mobile users in January 2009. And in January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser worldwide, up 112 per cent from 11.8 million mobile users in January 2009. Incredible!

As consumers, if we are spending all this time online, then that’s where we are going to be when businesses want to talk to us. And that folks, was the underlying focus of ad:tech 2010.

The key themes of the two day conference were how business can tap into the explosion in activity that is social media and how mobile usage has contributed to us spending even more of our time online. I know that there are social media deniers out there and they must be in the minority because any stream focused on social media was packed to the rafters. The main areas of social media focus were how business was using aspects of social media usage to drive its advertising reach.

Here is a quick take-away for those of you who didn’t make it to the social media streams at ad:tech 2010:

• Do “listen in” and “contribute” to the conversations occurring on various platforms. The key message was that as a business, you should be monitoring, reacting and responding.

• Don’t see social media as a short term strategy or fad. The clear message at ad:tech was that it needs to become an ongoing form of engagement. Marketers have had mixed fortunes when it comes to tapping into social media, they frequently try to engage with brand ambassadors and embrace user generated content. There were numerous examples of businesses that were able to gather a following through clever campaigns and events, but only to let them go as soon as the campaign was over.

• Remind yourself that you don’t have complete control. You can guide the followers, but once you overstep the mark and try to take control, you risk damaging your brand.

Without doubt advertising ideas and thinking relating to social media are in their infancy.

There have been numerous social media campaigns from mainstream advertisers who measure this success through video views, followers and friends.

The challenge moving forward is to turn these friends and followers into hard currency.

It is a task not dissimilar to a retailer attracting people into their store and then getting them to make a purchase.

The anomaly of Sydney Convention Centre as the venue for ad:tech 2010 was not lost on me. It was here in the early days of online that I attended many exhibitions promoting the internet. I’m pretty sure one of Sensis’ (then Pacific Access) key messages at those early PC shows was that it’s not all about “hits”, it’s about buyers. From that perspective nothing has changed.

Now you can sign into Facebook on Citysearch and become a trusted reviewer for us and all your friends!

We’re changing the way we do things on Citysearch by working a little closer with Facebook.

Thanks to Facebook Connect, you can now login to Facebook via Citysearch when you post a user review. Once you’ve logged in, your Facebook avatar (that’s your profile pic) will appear on Citysearch next to your comment. At the same time, you will be given the option to publish a note to your newsfeed that you’ve commented.

For example, say you’ve commented on our ‘Hey Hey’ article, you also have the option to tell your friends to read what you’ve said – ie, “Anyone who thinks the Hey Hey Skit was fine is so far from reality that they probably think Graham Kennedy still hosts a show with Bert – and that’s just for starters! Click thru to read my comments in full!” Once you’ve commented on your newsfeed your friends can ‘Like’, ‘Comment’ or click-thru to read your review. It’s all about the conversation!

With statistics* claiming that 78% of people trust the recommendations of consumers foremost, (that’s you), never before have your opinions carried so much weight or mattered so much. Given it’s our mission to recommend the best entertainment and lifestyle options on offer in Australia, we think opening things up to our users to add their voice  – whether they agree or disagree- is pretty important, and adding to our credibility.

And once you’ve posted your review, whether it’s your insight into good-value restaurants, hard-to-find bars, new wave clubs, must-see movie blockbusters, intelligent TV, emerging and dinosaur bands on tour or cutting edge arts and cultural events (and we use that term loosely to include AFL and NRL and plenty more), all your friends can agree or disagree – or is that agree to disagree?

These changes are great news for Facebook users who are getting a little tired of sending hugs and pokes or completing What species of bird are you? quizzes by providing you with real content to talk about. And it’s good for us because we get to hear it like it really is, and best of all, we all get to participate in the conversation across a very big audience.

So if you’re the next Margaret or David, Molly Meldrum or maybe even a Richard Wilkins (see, there’s a whole world of opportunity out there for some fresh opinions and talent), say it on Citysearch, boost your profile and kick start your reviewing career today!

* Nielsen ‘Trust in Advertising’ Report October, 2007