There are simply too many things going on. Here are a few quick hits with some thoughtful remarks (hopefully) to come later: MapQuest to Publish (Real) Books (taking online offline; they've got the brand to do it) Yellow Pages Group…
Today next-generation news aggregation site Inform unveiled itself. I spoke to CEO Neal Goldman a couple of weeks ago and got a demo of the site, which was very impressive. I don't have a great deal of time this morning…
The recent earnings' results from BellSouth, SBC and Verizon all show that their growth is coming primarily from high-speed Internet and wireless. Accordingly, we believe that the FCC's recent decision will enourage more investment in DSL by the RBOCs. Since…
I'm stuck in the Phoenix airport waiting for a plane that is delayed. By now, you all know that Google made a lot of money this past quarter. Here's the low-down from the official release: Google reported record revenues of…
Craigslist (CL) has been the proverbial poster child for friendliness, openness and online cooperation. However, as John Battelle reported first yesterday, CL has apparently blocked Oodle CEO Craig Donato's classifieds aggregator from crawling and indexing CL's listings. Currently, the local…
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,…
