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How Sputnik changed local search
By Chris Linnett | October 9, 2007
Fifty years ago the Soviets launched Sputnik, and local search was forever changed.
Last week I was invited to speak at the IEEE Professional Communication Society’s 50th-anniversary conference and provide a retrospective of local search.
In 1957, searching for information meant going to the library. And local search meant using a phone book.
On October 4 of that year, Sputnik was launched. As a result, President Eisenhower called for the creation of a highway network connecting our cities and a computer network connecting our scientists. Thus were born the Interstate Highway System and ARPANET—the Advanced Research Project Agency Network (part of the Department of Defense). In 1969, the ARPANET connected four locations. By 1981, more than 200. In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, and by 1994 a couple Stanford grad students were collecting their favorite Web sites. As their collection grew, it needed to be searchable, and Yahoo was born.
Then local hit the scene. In 1996 and 1997 Citysearch and Microsoft Sidewalk were launched, respectively. The idea was to tap into the multi-billion-dollar revenues of yellow pages by connecting local businesses with local consumers in this new medium. Both sites handcrafted fabulous editorial content that was expensive to scale. Local consumers flocked to it, but local advertisers didn’t. A great idea ahead of its time. Microsoft bailed out in 1999, selling Sidewalk to Citysearch, and then the Web bubble burst.
Citysearch weathered the storm and remains a strong presence today. Post-bubble, the major search engines have been offering local experiences as well, with the 2005 launch of Google Local being one of the most recent. Today, large and small players dot the local search landscape.
The Internet is going local. Quoting our own recent report on local, “local search grew 24% so far this year, while general Web search grew only 14%.”
Ray Kurzweil was the keynote speaker at the conference, and he has long said that people tend to perceive progress as linear, but in reality, technology often advances exponentially.
Looking back 50 years, local search has come an amazing distance, but the exponential progress of the next 50 years will propel local search beyond our most ambitious linear plans, just as Sputnik propelled the first 50 years of the Internet.
Topics: Local Search |
October 10th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Chris - great post and great overview - but I’m not so sure Kurzweil has it right in saying “local search has come an amazing distance.” There’s been a lot of noise and promise but for the consumer, local search is often just that: noise and promise. The fastest, most reliable local search is most often the same as it was 50 years ago. Doing resesarch (albiet on the computer instead of at the library) and then calling a list of merchants that you find in a directory.
October 10th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Thank you Amy.
I agree and disagree. Let’s distinguish lookup and discovery.
To _look up_ an address or phone number, I’ll use whichever is closest to my hands - computer or phonebook. So I agree, but this is a limited use case, and one waiting for technology to eliminate the artificial abstraction of needing to convert a business name to a 7-digit number.
But to _discover_ a Greek restaurant, in my neighborhood, that people like, and isn’t too expensive is beyond the bailiwick of the phonebook. The Web is essential, and its empowerment of consumers to provide their perspectives, revolutionary. The information is often decentralized, which is why some local sites are bringing that information together from across the web to a single place, like Yahoo Local or OpenList.com.
So while a phonebook can still help with a lookup, you glossed over impressive advancements that the Web brings for discovery within your city or neighborhood. What can be done on a computer today is qualitatively different than what could be done at the library in 1957.
Also, Ray Kurzweil warns that living in the early part of any exponential curve can mislead people into thinking the progress is linear. It’s not, but exponential growth of small numbers appears small. As we move to the right over time, an exponential curve turns sharply upward. (He did not address local search, so I added a break above between my comments and his for clarity.)
We are seeing significant growth in local search and laying the foundation for faster and greater improvements.
October 10th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Oh! Of course you’re right. I was overly glib about the tech advances - the reviews and other immediately accessible information IS light years ahead.
But in an odd way - it seems we’re light years ahead of 10 years ago, but I’m not sure about light years ahead of 50 years ago.
I didn’t think about it til I read your response, but it seems much of what we’re trying to do with local search is to replicate what was implicit about the way neighborhoods functioned in 1957: people knew their neighborhoods much better, “belonged” to them in a more connected way.
For those services or businesses that require (then or now) research and discovery, I like your assessment that we’re in the process of “laying the foundation for faster and greater improvements.”
To me, that challenge is the joy of being part of the “local online” space.
Thanks for your thoughtful response.