One of the things I've always liked about Yahoo! Maps is the ability to plot a point -- say the Hilton Hotel in downtown Atlanta -- and then perform category-based local searches in relation to that point. This is the…
To anyone who hadn't guessed, that's Espa±ol for open vs. closed. Here's a fascinating post at SiliconBeat about the brewing debate, ignited in part by the Craigslist objection to Oodle's scraping. I had a conversation about the whole thing with…
I'm in Hotlanta (where there's plenty of evidence of global warming) . . . at the DMA convention on a panel about "marketing to a consumer who is in control." Meanwhile, things keep happening. Here is today's third-quarter Yahoo! earnings…
The confidentiality inherent in this closed industry kept jealousy at bay, and it no doubt encouraged many executives who were successful to stay with their current employers. You have to wonder if the large sums of money made by a…
SiliconBeat thoroughly covers the new launch of this health search engine/destination. Blogger and sometime Kelsey Group conference panelist Tony Gentile disappeared from the radar, and this is where he landed as VP of product. Vertical search is about niches generally.…
Here's more from the Search Engine Watch blog on Google's bid to provide free Wi-Fi to San Francisco. We've discussed the implications of such a service before. It would allow for super precise location targeting, among other things (e.g., Wi-Fi…
The ever vigilant crew at SiliconBeat has identified another interesting mapping/real estate "mashup" (Google Maps) + meta search. There's a lot happening with maps, and real estate is the leading edge of practical, monetizable apps. Check out Trulia (proving how…
Swedish publisher Eniro has been very consistent in pursuing its strategy of shedding assets in small, emerging Eastern European markets so management can focus on making the company the biggest and best publisher in the Nordic markets. To this end,…
At the recent Directory Driven Commerce conference, Ezana Raswork of Canada's Yellow Pages Group gave a presentation detailing how YPG has phased out the inclusion of paid advertising on its directories' front covers. Part of the logic is that the…
Interesting article in the San Francisco Chronicle about how some advertisers and competitors are responding to the growth of companion books. The article suggests SBC's use of companions as a competitive weapon against its rival Valley Yellow Pages may be…
Speaking at a recent "investor day" event in Canada, Yellow Pages Group CEO Marc Tellier urged the national government to go easy on the income trust model, which has become a popular tax-advantaged ownership structure in Canada. Tellier is clearly…
Yellow Brick Road (YBR), the European directories holding company, has come out on top in bidding for Denmark's TDC Directories, the latest publisher to split off from a parent telecommunications company. The purchase price was 650 million euros. YBR, itself…
This is something of a surprise. But maybe not. More from John Battelle and Search Engine Watch. I'm in a meeting (secretly blogging) and will write more later.
I'm technically off today. But check out HomePages.com. It's real-estate mapping and accompanying monetization taken to the "next level," with a great deal of local info built around the map. Unlike mashups such as HousingMaps.com, HomePages has complete MLS information.…
There are some generally interesting, new consumer findings from Yahoo! (reported in MediaPost) about students' and parents' use of and attitudes toward traditional media and the Internet (specifically search engines). I haven't got lots of time to write about this,…
In September, ConsumerReports.org announced it had passed the 2 millionth subscriber milestone, which is quite impressive considering that consumers still resist paying for content online. CR's online success goes to the power of its trusted brand, its relatively unique content,…
Google has introduced tagging (bookmarks) to its personalized/search history functionality, which can also now be added as a content module to the personalized home page (Fusion). This new tagging capability allows users to create a directory of sites, which can…
The WSJ and others are reporting that Wednesday Yahoo! and MSN will announce consumer IM "interoperability." The conventional wisdom being widely repeated is: This now puts pressure on AOL, the IM leader, which has twice the market share of either…
A new report from Bank of America Securities (summarized by Editor and Publisher) reflects that national advertisers have not in fact abandoned newspapers and are shifting ad dollars to the Internet more slowly than widely perceived: The report found that,…
Here's Yahoo!'s new and improved news search with a dash of blog search. (This is probably not a full-blown Yahoo! blog-search offering.) In this example for "local search," see the right column. Yahoo is also integrating Flickr content and audio/video…
