Google Follows Yahoo!: Earnings Up, Stock Down
Here's the press release. Here's the after-hours performance. Even though Google beat estimates, expectations were really really high. Maybe everyone will take a deep breath now.
Hello! Yellow Pages Benefits Your Community
According to Amy Healy of the YPA, the public policy committee covered this topic in its Las Vegas meeting. She said that there are towns that have "do not deliver" proposals pending, but they stemmed from an effort to reduce…
Shopzilla Purchase Already Paying off for Scripps
"In the three short days that we owned [Shopzilla], the business contributed about a million dollars in revenue and about $350,000 in segment profits," said Scripps CEO Ken Lowe (quoted in MediaPost). Scripps bought Shopzilla for US$500+ million in June.…
Snap Rides Click Fraud's Coattails
Idealab's new search engine, Snap.com, offers advertisers a cost per action model and is presenting itself to would-be search-engine marketers (and those using existing PPClick models) as an antidote to click fraud. The notion of "action" varies by business model…
Yahoo! Offers Free Sites to SMEs
This is a potentially big deal, although there were many such free Web site offerings as recently as 2000-2001. To my knowledge, all of them failed. But none of them were Yahoo!, which can subsidize the service as something of…
Will Blinkx Get Bought?
I got a press call today about Blinkx's newly announced RSS video/multimedia feed. That quickly led to a broader discussion about video search and the online advertising marketplace. Blinkx is an impressive upstart that has, through scrappy innovation, been able…
News Corp/Fox to Buy MySpace Parent
In the emerging tradition of "old media" buying "new media," Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. announced today that it was acquiring Intermix Media Inc., which owns the wildly popular MySpace.com (the new "it" site for the youth demographic). According to comScore,…
MySpace Gains Traction with Users, Advertisers
Successor to Friendster among the highly coveted youth demographic, MySpace seems to have found a business model. Sites such as LinkedIn and Insider Pages have combined social networking with "traditional" models, such as classifieds and directory advertising. However, MySpace has…
Meta Social Networking Coming Soon?
One of the points former Tribe CEO Mark Pincus made in his keynote address at Interactive Local Media '04 was that there were too many silos in local and across the Internet -- "disconnected marketplaces," he called them. Pincus argued…
'Broadband TV' Experiment in SD
Courtesy of Paid Content, we've discovered TimeWarner Cable's "Broadband TV" experiment in San Diego, CA: Q. What is Time Warner Cable Broadband TV? A. Broadband TV gives you the flexibility and convenience of watching TV on your PC. Access your…
Swedish Businesses Following Consumers Online
A survey from eMarketer reveals some interesting data on the Swedish online advertising market. Swedish advertisers are moving full force into online advertising in Europe's most wired country. But there is fairly widespread dissatisfaction with online advertising among Swedish Internet…
Mo-Lo Is the Next Frontier
New text messaging and other upgrades from Yahoo! on the Mobile-Local front. Here's the official statement.
Google: It's Showtime
Google launched a new feature that enables users to find out local movie showtimes. You can search using city or zip and sort by movie or by theater. Ratings/reviews are provided by what appears to be a partnership with the…
Internet Video to Become Directional?
The Online Publishers Association (OPA) released a study that showed the ascendancy of video viewing online. Rich Media has generated tremendous buzz as an online branding vehicle and the findings of this survey would further confirm that. The basics: 27,841…
A9/Amazon Launch Visual Yellow Pages
A9.com, the search subsidiary of e-commerce giant Amazon, has launched a Yellow Pages/local search directoryA9.com, the search subsidiary of e-commerce giant Amazon, has launched a Yellow Pages/local search directory that features millions of photo images of businesses and buildings in…
MSN and Local
When I spoke a couple of weeks ago with Justin Osmer of MSN, who was giving me a demo of Virtual Earth, he said to me that improving local was the biggest piece of user feedback they received about their…
Here Come the Plug-Ins
The first of what may become many Google Earth plug-ins, a Prudential real estate office in Chicago makes Chicago area open houses and listings available on the Google Earth client. I don't think the mainstream will be downloading and using…
Let the User Beware
Earlier this week a jury awarded $1.6 million to a couple in Oregon that claimed that they found a rather unscrupulous plastic surgeon in their local Yellow Pages. Odd, I thought there was something about "buyer beware" that applied to…
Craigslist Continues to Gain
According to Hitwise (via Mediapost), Craigslist continues its impressive growth (sans marketing). Craigslist has become a real force in local; it's a collection of local communities and viable marketplaces and it now has a powerhouse local brand. There are now…
Let the Consolidation Begin
Social Networking + Vertical Search: Jobster acquires WorkZoo. There are arguably too many competitors in the recruitment/job search "space," including CareerBuilder, Monster, HotJobs, Indeed, SimplyHired, WorkZoo, LinkedIn, Oodle, Craigslist, local newspapers . . . the list goes on. Let the…