(image credit GooseGoddessS)

We posted just last week about ‘local’ being the new ’social’ for news publishers and it seems the guardian.co.uk (perhaps even taking editorial inspiration from the Moreover Blog!?) agrees.

The Digital Content Blog has posted a nice write-up of just a handful of the developments over in the States where many online news outlets are already trying to take advantage of this new ‘hyperlocal‘ buzz. AOL and some former eBay execs are both taking interesting steps in this direction, with AOL looking to expand it’s recently acquired Patch network and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar bidding to kick-start his local news service Peer News. Not forgetting that we have blogged in the past about YouTube’s efforts in this area and with foursquare regularly being touted as the ‘next Twitter’ is hyperlocal getting you excited?

Our Social Times have posted a great digest of resources and photos from this week’s Monitoring Social Media event which is well worth checking out here. Many thanks to Luke and the team for making everything run so smoothly and we look forward to the next time!

The dust is settling on yesterday’s Monitoring Social Media conference #msm09, so after many insightful and intellectual speakers it is time to ponder on what social media monitoring offers us now and where it can grow in the future.

The value of social media lies in people, as consumers help to shape or influence reputation it’s clear that media has already changed. While conversations occur around products or brands the key is knowing where these are happening, your role in them and which conversations you should be involved in. This is the value of listening, what issues matter to your customers and what drives that passion on particular subjects.

A great quote from yesterday was “Social media is word of mouth on crack” (I believe original credit for this goes to Scott Seaborn), and if you’re not sure what that means just ask Domino’s Pizza. It can work both ways though, as smart brands will use social media to involve and cultivate a fan base as well as to identify risks and improve their products.

While the case for listening may be strong, the case against such monitoring tools was also a point of discussion with Asi Sharabi’s controversial blog post inspiring a lively panel debate. No solution (right now anyway) is perfect and the current limitations in technology are important to discuss, along with the many strengths and benefits. All this can only be advantageous as we move forward and the social media monitoring industry matures. Social media is fundamentally changing the way we do business, while change can often be a challenge, the social Web is here now for the long term and the sooner we can integrate it into our business intelligence solutions the sooner we can all profit from it.

MSM09 has already sparked a spirited conversation here at Moreover Towers, as we look to continue growing and innovating in the space, we’d love to hear from you if you attended the event or have any words of wisdom on the subject, if so drop us a line in the comments below!

Monitoring Social Media 09 is taking place in London early next week, a first of its kind event for Europe, bringing together leading marketing professionals, brand managers and the virtuosos in the field of Social Media Monitoring.

The Moreover delegation are ready and raring to go, with over ten years experience in the business of media monitoring we look forward to the joining in the debate and offering some intellect of our own. Key speakers include Matt Atkinson, CEO of EHS Brann, and Paul Alexander from Beyond Analysis with host Luke Brynley-Jones giving his views on the inspiration behind and aims of the event at ‘we are social’ blog here.

We’d love to hear from anyone else attending in the comments below, any particular highlights you are looking forward to? And should you be unable to attend remember to check-in at the Moreover Blog over the latter half of next week for our thinking and thoughts on what promises to be a very influential meeting.

Here is an interesting piece from Mashable on the convergence of social media and local news. Publishers seem especially keen on exploring more and more local content, with social media seemingly a great compliment to this trend.

As people access this specific hyperlocal content, and engage in it at the same time, then I’m sure both publishers and users will see the benefits.

Social news pioneer Digg has joined the likes of Twitter and YouTube by adding it’s own real-time feed to the site homepage calling the feature (drumroll please..) Digg Trends.

The feature works by by identifying those stories that are generating a significant buzz, and then displaying them on the homepage for keen Diggers to either Digg or bury an article over a ten minute window. Based on the community decision during that time frame the fate of the story will be assured.

As real-time search and trends become increasingly popular it’s good to see another social media stalwart join the party. You can check the latest trending stories over on Twitter to join in the fun, and should a Moreover blog post ever reach the dizzy heights of Digg Trends remember to Digg, Digg, Digg!

Twitter Lists have been generating plenty of buzz this past week since their launch at the end of October, and it’s fascinating to watch the many ways they are being used in such a short space of time.

Mashable have published a piece on how news outfits are really running with this new feature, such as creating staff lists and gathering registers on favoured Twitterers. The New York Times staff list, already including 96 staffers, looks like a great resource for finding insightful tweets plus shows the NYT understands the boundaries between traditional news and social media are increasingly blurred.

In the UK The Guardian has created a handy list of Members of Parliament, so if you want to quiz your local MP on their expenses the Guardian’s list could be a good place to find them! Similarly CNN has curated a list featuring politicians involved in November 3 elections.

Any other particularly noteworthy news lists out there? The value seems to lie in creating filtered, specific lists that can that provide relevant information without all the noise and for the publisher there is always the potential to drive more traffic to their site.

Have a great Halloween weekend, if you’re out reveling tonight or tomorrow make sure you have a festive and safe celebration unlike these party-goers in Baltimore..

‘Haunted house’ gets a little scarier…
Baltimore Sun Oct 27 2009 12:26PM GMT

Enjoy!

When the CEO of Google speaks, the rest of the Web tends to listen so when Eric Schmidt gave a recent interview at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009 it is fair to say he raised some interesting points for anyone in the industry.

The entire forty five interview can been seen below, which Schmidt touches upon a number of topics from the forthcoming Chrome OS to the future of super-fast broadband, but our interest was piqued by the discussion on the Real-time search and social media.

Schmidt discusses the value of real-time information sources, which is more than just Twitter and Facebook, with the big challenge not being a question of indexing this data but how to rank and sort it. As we see such a huge increase in social media content it changes the way people consume information and Schmidt believes that “the great challenge of the age” is learning how to rank it all.

Do you think Google is up to the challenge or have Bing stolen a march on the Mountain View giant here?

CNN.com, one of the most popular websites in the U.S., has unveiled a rather radical and exciting new layout.

The new design makes the most of CNN’s strong branding, and it’s great to see user-generated content in the form of iReport being given the opportunity to shine.

So what do you think? Is it an improvement on before or is there still further to go before mainstream news sites really take advantage of their communities?