My Own City

Combining a Local Directory with a Hyper Local CommunityHS.fi / Finland

Lassi Kurkijärvi, Business Development Manager / Helsingin SanomatJeremias Koskela, Project Manager / Sanoma Data

My Own City –Everyday Answers

• We provide the Greater Helsinki Area with solutions to everyday needs and problems: What to do? Where to go?

• It’s a......local Directory,...local Community,...place for local Experts

• I need a great tailor!Where is a good restaurant, which hairdresser is the best,who can fix my car?

Photo by David Dennis

The Newspaperin Finland

• Circulation 420 000 copies

• 995 000 readers

• Over a million online users

• Part of Sanoma Corporation

Launched inAugust 2007

• Part of HS.fi Online Service

• HS.fi 1 000 000+unique visitors /week

• Oma kaupunki 80 000+unique visitors /week(hs.fi/omakaupunki)

• Massive database of places –currently over 12 000

• Around 10 percent of placescontributed by users

Greater Helsinki Area is full of interesting places –Use the Map to Discover them

• Restaurant and Event datafrom Nyt weekly supplement

• Public data from various official sources, such as municipal andstate authorities

• Local news produced by journalists; geotagged and keyworded

• Users can add their own reviews, photos, places, events and questions/answers

Combination ofData Sources

Building itBlock by Block

• Today we’ll tell you about what we’ve learned: one year on there is still a long way to go

• Building a community

• Understanding our users

• Designing a good UI

• Getting the tech together

• Return on investment

Photo by Holger Zschegye

Find a Place

Events

GroupsReview

andQ & A

Editorial content: celebrity faves & best places

Search

Browse

User photos

Rate it!

MMS and mobile News

Map alwaysbrowsable

Sponsors

Events

Who isattending?

What do theUsers Do?

• Users are happy to rate: it’s easy!

• They write reviews...

• And ask questions!

...but We Want More!

• Analytics development centered on social behaviour and user needs

• Co-operation with Finnish technical universities on the psychology of social media

• Persistent user profiles

• Development of social reward systems (”the King of the Town”), user relationship analytics and a recommendation engine to find places

Photo by Peyri

Building a Communityis never easy

• How to build a culture of participation and sharing?

• Positive word of mouth?

• Do incentives such as user ranking based on activity work?

• How should you rate users: for inviting your friends, for providing content which gets positive reviews...

Improve the UI:Use of Heatmaps; Virtual Earth licensed for use

• How was it all possible?

• A combination of different techs

• Making it all work: Jeremias tells it now

A Look UnderThe Hood

Photo by Ralph Bijker

August 2007:1.0 release

November 2007:1.1 release- Bug fixes

- Add Outscoped features

February 2008:1.2 release

- Feature development- History logging for future use

April 2008:1.5 release

- First big update- Community

features:* Groups

* Questions* New frontpage

October 2008:1.7 release

- Admin tools- Event search

improved

December 2008:1.8 release

- Virtual Earthimplementation

J2EEApplication

Server

Database

SearchEngine

Discussion/forum service

Event service

User dataservice

WEBSERVICES

Editorial service

Integrationplatform

Technical Architecture

•! J2EE Portal-technology

(Liferay portal server)

•! SOA-centered architecture

•! Duplicated nodes and load-

balancing

•! Connections through integration platform (broker)

in the future

FrontLoad

balancing

ApplicationLoad

balancing

Http-server node 1(Apache)

Http-server node 2(Apache)

App-server node 1(Tomcat)

App-server node 2(Tomcat)

Active databasenode

Passive databasenode

Current Application Setup

•! All nodes duplicated

•! Load balancing (router VIP) in

every layer

•! Basic PC/Linux nodes running

with

•! Apache 2.2

•! Tomcat 6.x

•! Active/Passive node with

database

•! Oracle 10g

Why Did We Use Portal Tech?

• SOA: Easy to combine several background services together and use of legacy services

• Standard J2EE portlets (jsr-168) means sharing codebase & portlets with other services

• User interface (in Liferay portal) enables drag-and-drop portlets, allowing change of themes and column structure

• Content is WYSIWYG with a Simple CMS (Liferay journal); separates pure CMS operations and presentation logic

Photo by Ronnie Garcia

Some Challenges Using Portal and SOA

• Response times and latency

• Complexity of architecture (SOA)

• Problem solving – hard to figure where the problem is

• Performance in very big services

Photo by Jurvetson

Making Money

• The Directory is journalistic content so all Places get equal regular visibility

• Sponsored search, contextual ad banners, expanded place descriptions and map POI –is this too complex?

• Customers are happy: we are driving a good amount of traffic to their restaurants and homepages!

• Package it better!Photo by Tao Zhyn

Commercialdevelopment

• Google is an important source of visitors due to excellent SEO

• The more places we have in the service, the more visitors we attract via search

• Expansion of service using Wiki-style methods?

• Key of media business model: attention and appreciation

Photo by Positv

Proving the Concept

• Going from Local to...

Globally Local!

• My Own World launching in January, building on what welearned with My Own City

• “From Finns – For Finns”

• Is this an easier concept?

What’s Next?

• 50 000 places

• 250 000 visitors fromGreater Helsinki Area

• Vibrant community

• New source of income fora newspaper

• Patience

Photo by Amir Fathi

Thank you!

lassi.kurkijarvi@sanoma.fi & jeremias.koskela@sanoma.fi