Ghost of Midnight

New York Times Guru on Social Web

The Local Onliner has a piece well worth reading today…

New York Times Digital Chief Martin Niesenholtz, keynoting the Yellow Pages Association conference this morning in Las Vegas, called local “a huge untapped opportunity in the directories arena that no one – including the portals – has yet tapped.”

… the winners in local “could come from many different directions: from the social networking side; from information businesses; from search; from startups; and, of course, from the directory players. So far no one has truly tapped and structured the input from local audience/s. When that happens, it will be a game changer. I have very little doubt about that,” he said.

During his talk, he told YPA that it is critical to fully embrace the social web. “There is tremendous knowledge and power locked up in our users, and traditional media businesses have failed so far to adequately exploit that.

Read the full post here.