The Praized Media Product Blog

Nous sommes aujourd’hui très heureux d’annoncer notre premier déploiement “enterprise” avec Groupe Pages Jaunes au Canada et le service Réponses Pages Jaunes. Depuis l’annonce récente du lancement de nos nouveaux modules de médias sociaux destinés aux sites Web des grands médias locaux, les réactions de l’industrie ont été extrêmement positives!

Voici le communiqué de presse officiel de Groupe Pages Jaunes:

Vous avez des questions? PagesJaunes.ca a les réponses

Un nouveau service qui permet aux consommateurs d’obtenir facilement des recommandations d’entreprises locales en ligne

Montréal (Québec), le 28 mai 2009 – Vous essayez de trouver un hôtel boutique à Montréal? Vous cherchez une suggestion de restaurant de sushi à Vancouver? Vous avez besoin qu’on vous recommande un peintre professionnel à Calgary? PagesJaunes.ca^MC a les Réponses.

Accessible sur http://reponses.pagesjaunes.ca, le service Réponses de PagesJaunes.ca^MC permet aux consommateurs de poser des questions et de recevoir des recommandations en temps réel sur les commerces locaux. Ce service permet également aux utilisateurs de partager leurs questions sur Facebook ou Twitter, et les réponses sont redirigées vers une page unique qui permet de tirer profit des quelques 1,2 million d’inscriptions de PagesJaunes.ca^MC.

« Nous sommes en mesure de mettre à la disposition des Canadiens une communauté en ligne où ils peuvent poser des questions et obtenir en temps réel des recommandations locales pertinentes qui proviennent d’un important bassin de consommateurs », mentionne Jean-Pascal Lion, vice-président, Marketing, Groupe Pages Jaunes. « Les consommateurs sont de plus en plus astucieux et débrouillards dans leurs recherches de commerces et fournisseurs de service locaux. Notre nouveau service Réponses fournit aux utilisateurs un environnement semblable à une foire aux questions, facile à utiliser et qui paraîtra familier à tous ceux qui fréquentent les médias sociaux », explique M. Lion.

De nombreuses conversations en ligne ont lieu chaque jour portant sur les commerces locaux les plus populaires ou sur les destinations favorites des internautes. Réponses de PagesJaunes.ca^MC ajoute un volet additionnel en offrant des références directes de marchands locaux et des recommandations de consommateurs. Depuis le lancement de Réponses plus tôt ce mois-ci, les utilisateurs ont reçu des conseils sur un vaste éventail de commerces et de services : restaurants, fleuristes, dentistes, mécaniciens, chirurgie esthétique, photographie de mariage et DJ.

Le service Réponses de PagesJaunes.ca^MC est propulsé par Praized Media, Inc., une entreprise de Montréal spécialisée dans les plateformes de médias sociaux.

Groupe Pages Jaunes
Groupe Pages Jaunes est le chef de file au Canada dans le marché de la recherche commercial locale. La société publie chaque année plus de 340 annuaires Pages Jaunes^MC et résidentiels. Groupe Pages Jaunes possède et gère également les annuaires en ligne les plus consultés au Canada, soit PagesJaunes.ca^MC et Canada411.ca^MC, ainsi que CanadaPlus.ca^MC, un réseau de sept sites urbains locaux. Groupe Pages Jaunes est détenu indirectement par Fonds de revenu Pages Jaunes (TSX : YLO.UN). Pour plus de renseignements, visitez le site www.ypg.com.

Source: site corporatif de Groupe Pages Jaunes

Today, we’re very excited to officially launch of our first enterprise customer deployment with Yellow Pages Answers at Yellow Pages Group in Canada. Ever since we announced our new enterprise social media modules a few weeks ago, reactions in the local media industry have been extremely positive.

Here’s the official Yellow Pages Group press release:

Have a Question? YellowPages.ca Has Answers

New Service Makes It Simple For Consumers To Get
Local Business Recommendations Online

Montreal, (Quebec) May 28, 2009 – Looking for a sushi restaurant suggestion in Vancouver?  Need a recommendation for a reputable house painter in Calgary?  Trying to find a boutique hotel in Montreal? YellowPages.ca™ has the Answers.

Available at http://answers.yellowpages.ca, the Yellow Pages Answers Service lets consumers ask questions and get recommendations in real-time for the most relevant local merchants.  The service also gives users the opportunity to broadcast their questions within their Facebook or Twitter networks with all answers coming back to a unique page that leverages the more than 1.2 million YellowPages.ca™ business listings.

“We are uniquely positioned to offer Canadians an online community where they can ask questions and find locally relevant recommendations from a large pool of consumers in real time,” said Jean-Pascal Lion, Vice President – Marketing, Yellow Pages Group.  “Consumers have become increasingly savvy and resourceful in the way they search for local businesses and service providers.  Our new Answers service provides users with a question and answer environment that is easy to use and will be familiar to anyone that participates in social media activities,” explains Lion.

While there are many conversations taking place online everyday about popular local business and favorite destinations, the Yellow Pages Answers Service takes the conversation to the next level by providing direct access to local merchant and consumer recommendations. Since launching the Yellow Pages Answers Service earlier this month, users have received recommendations for a wide variety of business and services including restaurants, florists, dentists, mechanics, cosmetic surgeons, wedding photographers and DJs.

The Yellow Pages Answers Service is powered by Praized Media, Inc., a Montreal-based software company that specializes in social media engagement.

About Yellow Pages Group
Yellow Pages Group is Canada’s leader local commercial search provider. It publishes annually more than 340 Yellow Pages™ and residential directories. The Company owns and manages Canada’s most visited online directories, YellowPages.ca™ and  Canada411.ca™, as well as CanadaPlus.ca™, a network of seven local city sites. Yellow Pages Group is indirectly held by Yellow Pages Income Fund (TSX: YLO.UN). For more information, visit www.ypg.com.

Source: Yellow Pages Group corporate site

We’ve just released version 2.0 of our plugins for Wordpress. This new release improves on many elements that used to take place on Praized.com and that are now happening on your site. We also deployed Facebook Connect.

Praized Community v2.0: (download here)

• Deployed a simplified (lightbox-based) sign-up/log-in process to avoid sending users to Praized.com and back to your site. This feature is optional but you need to activate it in your Wordpress back-office  (go in Settings - Praized Community to enable/disable)

• We’ve  also deployed Facebook Connect to log-in to the Praized Network using your Facebook username and password. This is available when using the new lightbox log-in (see above).  It will also be available in the standard log-in flow shortly.
• Implemented full user account management functionality within your own Web site.  People can now update their Praized account information (password, avatar, social media broadcast settings, etc.) right from within your pages, without ever leaving your site.
• We’ve implemented the concept of “display name” where appropriate.
• We’ve improved the user experience of the place and user profile pages by introducing a tabbed interface for activities  (votes, favorites, comments, etc.).  SEO and accessibility is not affected since the information is still  all in the page. The screen is simply reformatted on the fly via css and javascript.
• We’ve added geo meta and RDF tags to single merchant views for increased semantic and SEO value.
• Plug-in now comes bundled with full French translation if running WordPress in French.

You can also download our Praized Editorial Tools plugin v2.0 here.

These have been tested to be fully compatible with the latest WordPress release as well as WordPress MU and BuddyPress.

Hope you like these new features!

As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to ping us at help AT praizedmedia.com.

We just released a new version of our Wordpress plugins (version 1.7 for people tracking our versioning!) and here are some of the new features:

• We moved the search brick to the top of most of our platform templates. Experience shows that users prefer having the search brick on top as opposed to the side. For example, you can see it on the Top Places page or the Local Buzz page.  In a search result page, the number of results is now displayed.  At the same time, we’ve modified the search form widget so that it is automatically hidden when the same form is shown in the main content area.

• We also decided to split our “Praized Session” widget to introduce a new “Praized Section” widget.  We felt it was better to separate the Log-in/Join/Manage Profile/Logout functions from navigation functions like Top Places, Local Buzz and our new Questions & Answers section
• We exposed the place tagging and commenting functionalities for non-logged in users and made it so that the submitted data (tags, comment) is preserved and processed at the end of the login process if required (like we did for votes and such in v1.6)
• We added a new help section for the our platform. Note that the content we display in this page is actually stored on our server (but cached on yours), so you will get any updates we make automatically as we release them
• We added an upgrade notification mechanism so you don’t miss out on important new changes when upgrading to a new version of the plugin
• We added support for sponsored images in the sponsored links block
• Finally, we updated to praized-php-1.7 and to praized-wp-core-1.7.

Download our plugins here and here.

If you have any questions, comments or even suggestions to improve our plugins, don’t hesitate to contact us at help AT praizedmedia.com

We’ve just released a new version of our plugins for Wordpress.

Praized Community v1.6: (download here)

• We’ve implemented the Questions & Answers features! Now, any community using our Praized community plug-in can have its own Praized Answers service on its Web site.  See it on the Praized blog.
• We’ve also added the ability to select the Questions & Answers section as the default page for your Praized section
• We’ve added user avatar support where appropriate (user profile, comments, etc).
• We’re now supporting Google Maps up to 640×640px (from a previous max of 512×512px).

Praized Tools plugin v1.6: (download here)

• The Praized Tools plugin now comes with a default read-only API key that will link back to the Praized Hub (http://praized.com/) so you can be up and running within seconds. You can now placeblog and link back to Praized.com or your own intall on your blog.

These have been tested to be fully compatible with the latest WordPress release 2.7 as well as WordPress MU.

Hope you like these new features!

As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to ping us at help AT praized.com.

Praized received a surprise trophy last Thursday at the Boomerang Interactive Awards, one of Canada’s most prestigious interactive awards ceremony. The event was held at TOHU Cité des Arts du Cirque. The Boomerang Interactive Awards have been showcasing the best of Quebec’s interactive communications efforts since 1995.

Katherine Melançon, chairman of the jury, said about this trophy (translated from French):

“We wanted to honor Praized for its qualities but also to showcase a reality of interactive communications that we don’t often see in the Boomerang Awards: the accomplishments of entrepreneurs/developers working in beta mode and/or with open source software who are exploring new opportunities in social media. It’s also meant to underline the important role of coders and the fact that they are very creative”.

The Praized co-founders (Harry, Sylvain and myself) would like to take this opportunity to thank the industry for giving us this award, our dedicated and talented employees who are working hard to create our crazy vision, the many freelancers who’ve contributed to our success, all our users and fans who’ve been using our services, our financial partner CSL Ventures and our directory publishers partners, Yellow Pages Group and Yellow Book Usa.

Thank you all!

Coverage:

Infopresse

Infopresse (bis)

EmergenceWeb

I.never.nu

Pictures:

1) Sebastien holding the trophy like it’s his first born

2) Sebastien and Sylvain (his t-shirt says “Hacking is not a crime”)

3) Sylvain thanking the crowd

Last night, Sylvain Carle, our co-founder and CTO, was presenting the Praized API to Montreal NewTech attendees at Laika.  You can see the video here or here.

Click on the logo below. The 2008 Crunchies is an annual competition and award ceremony to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year. The Crunchies is co-hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, and TechCrunch. This specific award recognizes a company outside the United States. Thanks!

Introducing our latest product release: Praized Answers (answers.praized.com). Praized Answers allows anyone to ask a question about local products and services and broadcast it to a selection of social networks (including Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca, Friendfeed and Ping.fm). Broadcasted questions are accompanied by a short form przd.com URL to allow social media friends to answer questions in a central place (see: http://twitter.com/sebprovencher/status/1015634286).

Once they’ve clicked on the link (see: http://przd.com/q/wEg-TQ0xz), friends can use our answering tools to suggest places (via a search in our North American place database that includes more 17M+ businesses) and add a comment to the recommendation. Once suggestions have been made through our answering tool, the user can then decide which business(es) they’re going to contact or visit. After contacting/visiting a merchant, they can vote and comment on their experience using the Praized social tools.

The idea for Praized Answers came to us when we were thinking of the original consumer behavior model, i.e. “the process and activities people engage in when searching for, selecting, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of products and services so as to satisfy their needs and desires” (source: Wikipedia). One of the key sources of business referrals for small merchants is word of mouth. With the rise of social media, it’s becoming easier to ask your online friends for recommendations and Praized Answers helps consumers assemble all of them in one central place.

If you look at Local 2.0 sites today, most of them are focused on merchant reviews. As reviewing is at the end of the purchase process, we feel that most of these sites miss out on the first (and most important) step in consumer behavior: the trusted referral.

Praized Answers is built on the Praized platform, a free white-label local social networking platform. Our platform (available through our API at www.praizedmedia.com) comes with all of the North American business listings you’d expect to find in business directories along with social tools like voting, commenting, tagging and sharing.

It could be that you’re stuck at an airport and need to know where you can find a place to lie your head for the night. Maybe you’re looking for a new watering hole where nobody knows your name or perhaps you need to find a vase to replace the one that your kids broke with a hockey stick while they were playing indoors against mom’s wishes.

We’ve got you covered with Praized Answers.

Praized Answers is a way for you to submit a question about local stuff and harness the power of community to find the answers you are looking for. Simply use the helpful search form to ask a structured question or go solo and use a blank box to phrase your question as you wish.

As soon as you ask your question, it gets published to Praized’s Local Buzz newsfeed, our home page. You can also select other social media services to broadcast your questions (currently Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca, Friendfeed and Ping.fm). Choose how you wish to be notified of responses (email, Twitter, RSS).

Oh, but Praized Answers isn’t all about take, take, take. We encourage you to use Praized Answers to lend a hand by sharing your knowledge. When you see a question that you are obviously knowledgeable on, please post an answer and help a Praizer out. You can use our search tool to identify the perfect recommended merchant for your friends. They’ll love you for it!

Find it at answers.praized.com

We’d love to hear your feedback on our latest feature so please send your comments to help@praizedmedia.com or visit us on Get Satisfatction.