Monthly Archives: April 2009

Next week I will be moderating a panel discussion at the Yellow Pages Association conference in San Diego featuring national companies that spend tens of millions annually on Yellow Pages advertising. The hour-long panel (Monday, April 27, 11:45 a.m.) was put together by…

American University’s J-Lab, which is funded by The Knight Foundation, has announced new grants for eight hyperlocal sites as part of its New Voices competition. All of the sites are focused on geographic communities, with many of them appearing to…

Steve Espinosa's budding Local Search News site has begun to produce podcasts. We're the guest on the second episode -- a discussion about mobile search and mobile technology in general. The podcast builds off our guest column on his site…

One of the disadvantages of being the "most respected analyst firm" is that other people (including otherwise knowledgeable pundits) are wont to misquote you, use your comments out of context, or simply draw erroneous conclusions. Although we were flattered to…

ReachLocal has launched ReachLocal XChange, a local business ad exchange, with Fox Audience Network, Ask Sponsored Listings and others. By doing so, the company moves beyond its initial reliance on search packages to small businesses.The introduction of an ad exchange…

I saw several more articles over the weekend on how small businesses are using social network sites like Facebook and MySpace for marketing. This triggered a couple of thoughts… There’s a whole a ‘shadow network’ of business marketers (B2C and…

Here is a recap of posts from last week, in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full. Skype Redefines Itself: It's All About Local I’ve spent the past few months in talks with Skype about how…

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, a new report by consultants Sageworks reports that amid the economic gloom, some industries are actually doing pretty well. These industries, with their sales growth rates for the past year, include accounting and…

Intuit has purchased BooRah, a rating and review site, and will add its functionality to the Intuit small business platform, which has also incorporated the old StepUp e-commerce site and Homestead Web site construction services. The companies aren’t talking much…

I’ve spent the past few months in talks with Skype about how the company would like to diversify its product model, and better position itself as a tool to generate leads for local businesses. Perhaps the timing couldn’t be better…

Mobile ad network Millennial Media released its first monthly Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART). This extrapolates market data based on the activity it sees on its network -- much like the reports we've covered from the likes…

Recently the company that delivers Idearc Yellow Pages in the Princeton, NJ, area brought our office a few copies of the most recent edition. I imagine that most people do what I did when the book came, which was to…

Apartments are in the vanguard among online marketplace verticals, as more apartment owners take advantage of Web and mobile features to target prospects -- especially younger prospects. Indeed, apartment owners are increasingly leveraging video to show off floor plans and…