• It’s not all hamsters and wheels: An interview with software engineering radio | Inside guardian.co.uk | Guardian Unlimited
  I’m Mat Wall, Technical Architect for guardian.co.uk. As you probably know we’re a long way into the rollout of our new version of the web site.
  (tags: gmg guardian software)

This has just been published as an essay in the Reuters Institute publication ‘The Price of Plurality - Choice, Diversity and Broadcasting Institutions in the Digital Age’ (download the .pdf) which is part of the PSB Review . It was actually written at the start of the year, so as well as perhaps being a little old hat for many of the people who might look at this blog, some of it is perhaps a little date now. And, yes, if I was a really good blogger, I’d add all the links to it - but, I’m not. Sorry.

In the 15 years since the arrival of the first web browser, the internet has fundamentally changed the way that we connect with with information, people and organisations.

And the rate of this change is doing anything but slowing down. Billions of pounds spent each year on R&D by the likes of Google and Microsoft; or by venture capitalists looking for the next big thing are driving a continuous process of innovation that is global in scale, but all too often, very local in impact.

At an extreme level - as a result of wizardry in Mountain View, California - I can go to Google Earth to find out who has the biggest garden in our road.

Should I then want to go out to drown my sorrows after finding out that it isn’t me, I can go back to Google type in ‘pubs in esher’ and be presented with a list of 10 fine establishments accompanied with a map showing exactly where they all are.

In both cases, I’m being offered a better local information service than was imaginable even five years ago - even though the providers of that service probably couldn’t even spell the name of the village I live in, let alone know where it is.

Should I seek further consolation, I can then go to Wordpress.com, from a San Francisco-based start-up to start a blog about life in Surrey with an inadequately proportioned garden. Or perhaps go on to Facebook and start a support group for the horticulturally-challenged masses of west Surrey.

In both cases, I’m being given the tools to communicate and connect with people in a way that was impossible a few years ago. It still feels like a very local activity - but in both cases it is happening on a global platform.

In each of these examples the critical enabler - for discovering information, for enabling communications and connections - is web-based software. And if I have one prediction to make about the future of local information and communication it is this: ever greater value will migrate to those who provide the software that makes things happen.

This is true of the general information market - but it is even more so with location based activity, for two reasons. The first is that developers like it because our location - whether given explicitly as a postcode or a point on a map - or interpereted from, say, a GPS signal in a mobile device - can be precisely defined, and act as a filter to a vast array of content.

The second reason is because the business people like it. The online local advertising market in the US is forecast to be worth $13bn this year according to Borrell Associates - that is a big market to aim at. And as discussed, a software solution that works in the US will often migrate to the UK with relative ease.

As a result, there is no shortage of start up activity and innovation here.

Much of it comes from a fusion of Yellow pages style directory with a community and review section. Recent years have seen a rash of UK start ups in this areas: WeLoveLocal.com. TouchLocal.com, TrustedPlaces.com, Tipped.com are all offering variations on this theme.

But it goes beyond this. Take four examples of how location acts as a powerful and useful filters: the blog and news aggregator from the US: Outside.in and Everyblock.com, and from the UK: FixMyStreet.com, 192.com

Outside.in takes the mass of blogs out there and allows you to navigate them geographically - asking bloggers to tag their posts by location. The result is a grass-roots up review of a given neighbour hood.

Everyblock.com is a new service, funded by the Knight Foundation, which aggregates masses of public data (eg crime statistics, restaurant public health inspections) and allows you scan these block by block.

FixMyStreet.com is the latest offering from MySociety.org which allows you to type in your postcode and report problems in your neighbourhood immediately to the council.

And 192.com combines a mass of data sources to combine searches on the electoral role, business directories and land registry data. The amount of information that subscribers can gather just from the initial input of a postcode is quite staggering.

Meanwhile, geography is also becoming a critical filter for text, pictures and video.

Many years ago, Topix.net launched in the US, aggregating news from thousands of sources and letting you search by your zip code. Now Google has enterted this market in the US - and in the UK they have just launched a <a href=”http://www.google.co.uk/politics/”>politics site</a> that lets you type in your postcode and get headlines just relating to your constintuency.

At the same time both the photosharing site Flickr, and YouTube now carry geo-data. As a result at the same time as swooping through Google Earth to see how big my neighbours garden is, I can also see YouTube videos according to where they’re from. Think of it as a geographical EPG, and imagine where this might go if all news clips were similarly tagged.

The wealth of content made available online from both traditional providers (newspapers, broadcasters, directory publishers), public bodies and increasingly from amateur providers is ripe for sifting and sorting according to where we live.

And all of this is heading in one direction: making location based information more useful and accessible than ever before.

Which devices this happens on is largely irrelevant. Yes, some of it will be mobile; some of it through the PC and some of it through the TV. In each case, the value chain is slightly different - but the consistent theme is of a proliferation of content, and a shift in value to those who organise it and those who facilitate connections between like minded individuals.

However, this future model is not without its problems - not least for traditional content providers who now find themselves one step removed from consumers and, all too often, advertisers.

Local and regional newspapers, for example, face profound structural challenges as they try to define their role in this new ecosystem. In previous decades they created value by aggregating editorial and advertising and offering exclusive targeted access to a their audience.

Such exclusivity is no more. Advertisers have a host of digital offerings to chose from, and readers have dozens of places to go - not least the BBC’s ever burgeoning digital offerings.

It is convergeance, yes, but not in the ‘gee-whizz-I-can-watch-video-on-my-mobile’ sense of the word. It is a convergeance of what have traditionally been seen as distinct business sectors. Software, broadcast, directories, newspapers, telcos are all treading on each others toes and trying to nudge each other out of the way.

The net result is a structural shift in the economics of traditional local and regional media businesses, and consequently an ever diminishing appetite to invest in strong local journalism.

And this is the nub of the matter. This has to be of concern to all who care about ensuring citizens remain truly informed about their area. Yes, a wealth of local data is being liberated on the web. Yes, a culture of participation is allowing everyone to create and distribute their own content. But the process of journalism is an integral part of local democracy, we will all be poorer is this proliferation be accompanied by a dilution in local and regional news coverage.

It goes beyond this immediate impact on the local market. Regional and provincial journalism is the lifeblood of national journalism. The next generation of lobby correspondents, of reporters who will tell us what is happening in far flung corners of the world, who will win awards for exposing corruption in the City and Whitehall will be groomed on your local Argus, Echo or Star.

The world of blogs and wikis, citizens journalism and user generated content has brought with it the promise of a new world of local content. It is true they have introduced a wealth of new content for search engines and aggregators to collate, and the element of participation has brought a new dimension to the media landscape. Some stars have emerged from this explosion.

But, the brutal truth is that no-one has made this new world of local content work commercially.

In the US, the enthusiasm around citizen journalism on a local scale has been somewhat punctured since one of the movement’s pin-ups Backfence.com folded last year.

n the UK, a start up such as Rick Waghorn’s My Football Writer, which covers Norwich City with wit, verve and unwavering committment is a shining example of regional editorial entreprenerialism, but it is one site around one topic in one region. An exception that proves the rule.

The most commercially successful local digital businesses tend to have one thing in common: they make no significant investment in original content.

That said, publishers and broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic have appropriated these new tools and ways of working as they innovate and evolve their output for this new local landscape.

We see more video and more community elements and more user generated content. Sites are restructured to become more search engine friendly. Stories, audio and video are geo-tagged. The creative efforts and intentions are now impressive – we can see the creative seeds of the future of local and regional journalism. The question is whether the business model exists to allow these seeds to develop.

Much of this is going to be down to the market. Local advertisers will make decisions whether to spend with their local paper (and its website) or radio station or with Google or any one of the dozens of digital alternatives they are now offered.

But regulation also has a part to play. And I urge anyone who is looking at this market from a regulatory perspective to consider three things.

First: that at a local and regional level we can no longer talk about broadcasting as a discrete market, there is already a converged local information, entertainment and advertising market, and the degree of convergence is only going to increase in the coming years. This affects they way we have to see ownership restrictions, it also affects the way we have to think about the possible market impact of any public service interventions in the local and regional arena..

Second, time is a factor. Regulators need to realise that the coming decade is a period of fragile transformation for local and regional publishers and broadcasters. They are leaving behind the certainties of the past for a future that is at best only 40% defined. They have to bring both readers, listeners, viewers, advertiser and shareholders with them. During this process, any increase in activity in the local markets from the BBC - or, for quoted companies, even the threat of such an increase – will have disastrous consequences.

Third – that innovation needs to be both commercial as well as editorial. The long term challenge for this market place is to develop businesses that both deliver both the public value that we expect from local regional and provincial journalism and the economic value that is critical for the health of UK plc. This has worked in the past, and provided there is the right regulatory environment, there is no reason why it won’t work in the future.

I should stress, finally, that this is about clearing the path for the future, not clinging on to the past. No business has a God-given right to exist. And, in the coming years, it is very likely that we will see some names we once thought immortal fall by the wayside. But we should be aware that what is currently happening in the local and regional media markets is more about revolution than evolution, and requires radical thinking from all involved.

I’m in Stockholm today, and earlier this afternoon, I was voted on to the board of Eniro, the Nordic’s leading search business (the equivalent of Yell). Fascinating business, well on the road of digital transition; and fascinating board members.

This report from their AGM tells all.

• Agency Report 2008 Index - Advertising Age - DataCenter: Agencies
  (tags: advertising agencies)

• Publisher Tested the Waters Online, Then Dove In - New York Times
  It may be a niche publisher, but the International Data Group has been working out the answers to some big mainstream questions. The biggest one: Can print media survive the transition to the Internet?
  (tags: idg b2b publishing)