My Own City
Combining a Local Directory with a Hyper Local Community
HS.fi / Finland
Lassi Kurkijärvi, Business Development Manager / Helsingin Sanomat
Jeremias 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 Newspaper
in Finland
• Circulation 420 000 copies
• 995 000 readers
• Over a million online users
• Part of Sanoma Corporation

Launched in
August 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 places
contributed by users

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

Combination of
Data Sources
• Restaurant and Event data
from Nyt weekly supplement
• Public data from various official
sources, such as municipal and
state authorities
• Local news produced by
journalists; geotagged
and keyworded
• Users can add their own
reviews, photos, places, events
and questions/answers

Building it
Block 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

Search Find a
Place
Browse
Editorial Events
content:
celebrity
faves & best
places
User photos
Review
and Groups
Q&A

Map always
Rate it!
Events browsable
Who is
attending?
Sponsors
MMS and mobile News

What do the
Users 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 Community
is 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

A Look Under
The Hood
• How was it all possible?
• A combination of different techs
• Making it all work:
Jeremias tells it now
Photo by Ralph Bijker

April 2008:
1.5 release December 2008:
November 2007: - First big update 1.8 release
1.1 release - Community - Virtual Earth
- Bug fixes features: implementation
- Add Outscoped features * Groups
* Questions
* New frontpage
August 2007: October 2008:
1.0 release February 2008: 1.7 release
1.2 release - Admin tools
- Feature development - Event search
- History logging for future use improved

Technical Architecture Search
Engine
•! J2EE Portal-technology
(Liferay portal server) W
•! SOA-centered architecture E Discussion/
B
•! Duplicated nodes and load- S
forum
balancing service
E
•! Connections through J2EE R
integration platform (broker) Application V
in the future Server I
User data
C
service
E
S
Event service
Database
Integration Editorial
platform service

Front
Current Application Setup Load
balancing
•! All nodes duplicated
•! Load balancing (router VIP) in
Http-server node 1 Http-server node 2
every layer (Apache) (Apache)
•! Basic PC/Linux nodes running
with
•! Apache 2.2
Application
•! Tomcat 6.x Load
•! Active/Passive node with
balancing
database
•! Oracle 10g
App-server node 1 App-server node 2
(Tomcat) (Tomcat)
Active database Passive database
node node

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

Commercial
development
• 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 we
learned with My Own City
• “From Finns – For Finns”
• Is this an easier concept?

What’s Next?
• 50 000 places
• 250 000 visitors from
Greater Helsinki Area
• Vibrant community
• New source of income for
a newspaper
• Patience
Photo by Amir Fathi

Thank you!
lassi.kurkijarvi@sanoma.fi &
jeremias.koskela@sanoma.fi