Darby Sieben -

There is no doubt about it, if you follow the online local space that Check-In is “In” for 2010. A recent article on Mashable, “Foursquare’s Growth Not Slowing Down: 725,000 Users, 22 Million Checkins” definitely proves the point for this 1-year old startup organization.

In February I did a post on my FourSquare experience that you can read on my initial experiences and the impact on local.

A couple of days, one of my work colleagues, Mohamed Kahlain, follow him on Twitter, sent me the link to CheckIn Mania, a mashup that features checkins from FourSquare, GoWalla and Britekite. This was originally posted on Mashable.

In a nutshell what CheckIn Mania does is allows you to enter any city, click on the map and select a business. Once you select a business you can see who is the mayor of that place + how many checkins to that business and any tips. You also have the ability to select the “Search by Map” which is a neat feature that allows you to move the map and the locations update as opposed to updating the locations by click.

Here is the screenshot with one of my favorite restaurants (of which I am in the Mayor in Calgary) called Spicy Hut.

It is no secret that any of the location based services listed above have the highest penetration in major US markets like San Francisco and New York, but what about Canada?

Are Canadians checking in?

So I decided to spot check some businesses in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal to see how active Canadian’s are. I decided to focus on Restaurants. My selection criteria for which restaurants and spas to choose was as following, In Google I did a local search and selected business #3 in their 7-pack. In YellowPages.ca, I selected the #8 business and in Yelp.ca I selected business #6. This would give me a random sample of businesses. I also limited this to FourSquare as this is the most popular check-in service.

Here are my findings.

Vancouver Restaurants:
C Restaurant (selected from Google) – 9 checkins
Tojo’s Restaurant (selected from Yelp) – 33 checkins
Top Of Vancouver Revolving Restaurant (selected from Yellowpages.ca) – 17 checkins

Calgary Restaurants
Calgary Marriott Hotel (selected from Google) – 21 checkins
Capo Restaurant (selected from Yelp) – 5 checkins
Karma Fine Indian Cuisine (selected from YellowPages.ca) – 2 checkins

Toronto Restaurants
Bistro 990 Restaurant (selected from Google, this is actually listing #4) – 11 checkins
Pomegranate Restaurant (selected from Yelp) – 8 checkins
The Real Jerk (selected from YellowPages.ca) – 34 checkins

Montreal Restaurants
Restaurant Toqué (selected from Google) – 5 checkins
Santos (selected from Yelp, actually #8) – 40 checkins
Arahova Souvlaki (selected from YellowPages.ca) – 15 checksin

The only thing that surprised me about the above results is Toronto. I would have expected to Toronto to come in closer to Montreal in terms of checkins because of population concentration and smartphone penetration. However, this might be a result of the fact that Toronto does not have the density of Montreal (land mass to population size), which might also explain why Vancouver is more comparative to Montreal. Calgary actually holds it own, relative to its population size and the fact that Calgary.

Although comparatively to the US, Canada is not at the 1/10 rule (see some US results below), it is pretty clear to me that Canadians in the large urban markets have started to embrace checkin. This group, like in the US, are the ones at the start of the product curve and the big question going forward is whether checkin services will hit mass adoption.

How does this compare to the top US cities. Here are the results for San Francisco and New York using the same process as above. I used YellowPages.com as the 3rd source.

San Francisco Restaurants
Zuni Cafe (selected from Google) – 459 checkins
R & G Lounge (selected from Yelp) – 296 checkins
Cote Sud (selected from YellowPages.com) – 6 checkins

New York Restaurants
Spring Street Natural Restaurant (selected from Google) – 495 checkins
La Sirene (selected from Yelp) – 52 checksin
Serendipity 3 (selected from YellowPages.com) – 236 checkins

Popularity: 3% [?]

So last week I was at the Kelsey Conference in San Diego during the brand relaunch for Yellow Pages Group. With our brand relaunch, we also launched a series of funny television commercials. One of the those commercials is emerging as the one that seem to have gotten the most traction in YouTube and even has it own fan page on Facebook. The video I am referring to is the Oily Man video, see below.

Since I started working with Yellow Pages Group in 2006 we have produced (not me specifically, but our communications teams) some pretty funny ads for our Yellow Pages business and our Auto Trader business.

Here are my favorite 3 ads; 1 from our current Yellow Pages Group campaign and 2 ads from previous Auto Trader campaigns. Which one do you think is the funniest ad?

Yellow Pages Group Oily Guy (2010)

Auto Trader Research (2008)

Auto Trader “Big Fatty” (2006)

Want to see more ads. Follow the links below:

– Yellow Pages Group Ads on YouTube – 3 ads from 2010
- Cliff Your Ride Promotion on Youtube – user generated from 2010
- AutoTrader Ads on YouTube – 3 ads from 2008

Popularity: 6% [?]

Last week I had the pleasure of posting screenshots on the new YellowPages.ca iPhone Application launch – check out that post to see those pictures, this week I get the pleasure of posting screenshots on the new YellowPages.ca.

Canada’s Largest Online Directory has just launched its most ambitious release. This release includes some new features that are sure to please users. I will follow this posting up with a more detailed look at the new features, but here are some screenshots and highlights.

Of course the best way to experience this new platform is to check it our yourself at YellowPages.ca.

New YellowPages.ca Home Page

You will notice some new features on the home page. Type-ahead, links to Deals, provided by RedFladDeals.com and new Dining Guide provided by Restaurantica.com.

Deals from RedFlagDeals.com

Dining Guide by Restaurantica.com

New Search Results Page

Here I did a search for Restaurants in Calgary.

On this page, notice a few items. At the top of the screen – towards the right hand side you will notice that I am now logged into YellowPages.ca using my Facebook Account. You will want to do this as this is what is going to allow you to rate and review businesses.

Another neat feature is when you have a listing that has lots of individual listings in a city, for example, big chain restaurants. Here is a search for Restaurants in Toronto and you will notice the listing for Mandarin Restaurant expanded to show me locations.

New Merchant Page With Ratings and Reviews

Here is a search for Monty’s Crab Shack in Calgary.

If you are the first to review this business, select the review this business icon and you will be presented with the following pop-up window:

Finally if you are looking at a listing that does not contain any enhanced content information, YellowPages.ca will suggest other places that are similar that contain enhanced information. Here is a search for Badass Jacks Subs and Wraps in Edmonton.

Focus on Mobile

New YellowPages.ca Mobile section featuring direct access to all the popular device applications such as iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Palm.

The Video Channel continues to get it home page exposure and is fast becoming the source of local video searches in Canada. Check out my original post for YellowPages.ca Video Channel Get Home Page Exposure.

In my opinion, the Online Services team at Yellow Pages Group did a great job pulling this together. From my perspective, always great to working with a team of incredibly talented individuals who can make big projects like this happen. I am proud of their work.

So what do you think?

Popularity: 5% [?]