Kelsey Group puts on the Interactive Local Media conference every December.  While I’ve spoken at these events for Yahoo! in prior years, this time around I was happy to sit back and attend a few sessions.

It’s clear that local, mobile and social are coming together in very interesting ways.

Some takeaways from some of the panels and side conversations at the event:

• Facebook has over 900K fan pages for local merchants according to Backyard, a Facebook app provider that is set to launch.  While there are over 15mm local merchants domestically, many of these Fan Pages are concentrated in categories like restaurants and nightlife - so that coverage is actually pretty decent.  These pages are potentially disruptive to traditional “directory style” merchant profile pages.

• Kelsey Group estimates 9% of local businesses have a Twitter account.  It will be interesting to see what differences emerge for businesses as they build followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook.  One potential differentiation - Twitter for truly real-time updates (something happening now - like open late today, perishable inventory, big crowd watching the game here now). Meanwhile, Facebook might be more on the community building side of things - what do my friends think and recommend, who’s planning to go there when, etc.   Building a direct marketing channel to customers is different than playing in a community-based sandbox that happens to be about your business.  Facebook already allows admins for Pages to cross-post to Twitter. Read more »
  
  Related Links
  
  • Yahoo and Facebook Connect
  • ILM '09 Overview
  • SMB's Embracing Twitter

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