TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap
Here is a recap of posts from last week, in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full.
The Knot Launches Local Wedding Sites
The Knot has launched 75 local URL sites as well as several niche sites, including Chinese weddings, gay wedding, beach weddings and destination weddings. More than 200 local and niche sites are planned by the end of 2009, according to coverage in The Wall Street Journal. (read more…)
How Can Google Improve? Local Execs Comment
We all live in Google’s world now. Nobody would dispute that there are many positives associated with that. But how do industry practitioners really feel about it?. Can it be improved? We asked three executives who cover different parts of the local ecosystem, promising them anonymity. (read more…)
Metro Directories to Fold; Yellowbook to Honor Contracts
The independent Atlanta-based Yellow Pages publisher Metro Directories will go out of business this year, and its rival Yellowbook has agreed to honor the contracts of Metro advertisers for books yet to be published this year. (read more…)
ShopSavvy Localizes Mobile Shopping, Care of Krillion
Krillion announced today that it will power product inventory search on the ShopSavvy application for Google Android based phones. This app gets high marks on the cool factor. Produced by Big In Japan, ShopSavvy has been a popular free Android application (400,000 users) that lets users scan bar codes to see what deals are available. The scanned data then feeds into ShopSavvy’s database to reveal product info for same or similar products. (read more…)
A Conversation With Dex: More on the New Mobile App
Following yesterday’s preview of Dex’s new line of mobile search products, I had the chance to talk to the company today about the ins and outs. First, the product line consists of an SMS search tool, a mobile Web site, a smartphone java application, and an iPhone app. The idea, as it’s been executed by many directory publishers, is to reach the greatest portion of the market possible. (read more…)
Microsoft Turns Your Car Into a Mobile Device
A great deal has already been written about the work Microsoft is doing with Ford to make the car itself a more powerful mobile device. I just came across an interesting video that shows some of these features in action. Ford’s head of Information Systems, Gary Jablonski, walks through some of the features of the Sync product, built into some Ford models. It lets users listen to music and send and receive calls and texts while driving. Lots more mobile local search features can be envisioned, based on these. (read more…)
Dealix Launches New Leads Platform
Online leads for cars are broken. The vast majority of auto shoppers won’t even fill out a request for bid because they think they’ll get inaccurate, incomplete and tardy information from the dealer. But that doesn’t stop vendors from working on better solutions. Today, Cobalt’s Dealix division rolled out a new leads platform that it claims will transfer leads to dealers almost instantaneously, while “identifying, processing, and delivering higher quality leads.” (read more…)
Global Smartphone OS Shares: What Do They Tell Us?
AdMob has supplied a steady stream of monthly reports that extrapolate mobile market data from its ad network. Its latest report (February) has a few interesting points about mobile Web traffic shares among smartphone operating systems in the U.S. and globally. The iPhone holds the lion’s share (and fastest growing share) of mobile Web traffic. In the U.S., this amounts to about 50 percent, up from 10 percent in August 2008. (read more…)
Get a Fwix on Your Location
Fwix, a social news site that launched last summer, has just launched a local search iPhone app (via TechCrunch). It will be an all-in-one local app that aggregates latest news, blog posts, Yelp reviews, crime reports and other info that can be pre-filtered by users’ preferences. The user interface will be based on a map (including a heat map of activity) as well as a list view that offers the “news feed” format that has been popularized by social networks such as Facebook. (read more…)
The Importance of the Reader vs. the Writer
When I went to work in the new Information Services Division of Dow Jones in 1980, I was taken on a tour of the newsroom including the area where the news wires spit out a continuous flow of information called the broad tape. I remember being told that the first responsibility a reporter had was to get information out to broad tape subscribers, regardless of the topic, because every piece of news and information had value to someone. (read more…)
