Sebastien is Praized Media’s co-founder and VP Product Management. He has more than 12 years’ experience in local search, interactive entertainment and online media. Sebastien co-founded Praized Media in 2007 to help local media companies tap into the growing potential of online word-of-mouth and social media. Praized Media recently launched Needium, an innovative social media lead generation service for SMBs. He writes about traditional media, local search and social media on his blog at  and tweets at @sebprovencher.

When Sebastien speaks I listen. You should too.

****

From my point of view, here are what I think the important events in
“local” in 2010.

1) The launch of Twitter Places:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/14/twitter-places-geo-tweets/ and
http://blog.twitter.com/2010/06/twitter-places-more-context-for-your.html
More ways to geolocalize your tweets means more local/social opportunities. More and more people think Twitter’s future will be “local”.

2) Foursquare went from less than 1M users to more than 5M users in 2010. 2M check-ins daily.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/foursquare-hits-2-million-check-ins-25k-new-users-daily/
Still curious to know how many of those are “active” users (same metric as Facebook) but nonetheless, Foursquare is now a key player in the local/social ecosystem.

3) Facebook launches Places
http://blogs.praized.com/seb/facebook/facebook-places-will-be-huge-capturing-stories-about-places/.
Not as big as bang as I expected but a much needed “local” infrastructure in Facebook. 2011 will probably see growth and better integration.

4) The launch of the iPad. Seen as a savior by many newspapers before the launch, I’m not sure those expectations were met
http://mashable.com/2010/10/19/ipad-newspaper-savior/.

Undoubtedly, on another level, the iPad is a resounding consumer success, creating a new space. What Apple did for smart phones, they’re doing it again for tablets.

5) The rise of Groupon and the daily offer space. Incredible revenue growth. High popularity. New local ad vehicle. ‘Nuff said.

6) Groupon rejects Google’s purchase offer. Worth a bullet by itself. Rumored $6B offer. Wow. Again, ‘Nuff said.