Looking back, I believe 2009 was a transition year in the local media space. Mobile finally came of age after many years of broken promises and put “geo” front and center. Social media became a hot topic in the local media circles, something that was almost unthinkable 3 years ago when I started blogging about the power of the geo-social intersection. Many traditional media firms (Yellow Pages and newspaper publishers) spent the year reorganizing or worrying about their debt level which slowed down innovative deployments. 2009 was also the birth of the Local Social Summit, an event dedicated to this brave new world.

Last year, I was truly inspired by the zeitgeist and wrote my “I Have Seen the Future of Local Media” blog post (it became an eleven-page .pdf document!) in which I explain why the real-time social media revolution is a game changer in the local media space. I also wrote about Why Social Media is Not Just About Merchant Reviews, prepared a list of KeySuccess Factors for User Reviews Deployment, presented a compendium of future user features of The Perfect Local Media Company of 2014 and published a guest post on LeWeb’s blog explaining Why FourSquare Is Not The Next Twitter.

I obviously don’t write in complete isolation and I want to also share with you a few blog posts that truly inspired me in 2009.

• Greg Sterling’s If I Were a Yellow Pages Publisher . . .
• MG Siegler’s The Great Location Land Rush Of 2010
• Erick Schonfeld’s We All Live In Public Now. Get Used To It
• Neg Norton’s Predictions For The Changing Local Search Landscape In 2010
• Pat Kitano’s Media Predictions for 2010

In 2010, expect the following:

1. It will be the year where “Local” becomes strategic for all media players, triggering the beginning of what I called in 2008 The Local Wide Web
2. The economy recovers and new disruptive technologies are born. As the Kelsey Group said at their ILM 09 conference, “Get Ready for the Post Recovery Digital Shift”.
3. Social media monetization will start happening on a serious scale through reputation management and online coupons/promotions
4. On mobile, 2009 was the year of the iPhone. 2010 will be the year of Android
5. In the second half to the year, venture capital will once again start flowing to fund innovative startups, ready to disrupt large industries. We will see a lot of mergers and acquisitions in the “local” space throughout the year.
6. Human resources will be an issue in large media organizations. Hiring and retaining talent that understand the shift to mobile and social will be strategic. Entrepreneurial profiles and rewarding risk-taking will have to become the norm.

For those of you that would like to know more about Sebastien Provencher, here is his bio…

Sebastien Provencher is a real-time web and social media aficionado, a local search, traditional media & Yellow Pages industry expert and the co-founder of Praized Media, a software company that helps local media companies embrace the social Web.