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 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.…
As pre-announced at last week's Marketplaces conference, DexKnows has launched a new line of branded local search products, including an iPhone app. The line is built and powered by mobilePeople, a company that has built strong applications for a number…
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…
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…
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…
Gabriels and Endeca have launched a new white-label auto portal. The effort formally kicks off a recently announced partnership to inject Endeca’s search capabilities into Gabriels' vertical sites. The new portal moves away from a simple listing product, offering a…
The New York Times publishes separate sports and business sections on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It may soon move away from separate sections altogether. This past Saturday, there was not a single display ad in either the sports or the…
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…
Thanks again to all those who attended Marketplaces 2009. If you missed the show, or any of our coverage, below is a collection of posts from the week. Marketplaces 2009: Top 10 Takeaways Thanks to everyone who came out to…
Longtime U.S. independent publisher White Directory (owned by Hearst Corp.) has launched a complete rebranding, dropping the old "Talking Phone Book" in favor of "LocalEdge." The company says it plans to phase in the new brand over the next 12…
The Yellow Pages Association released some details of its 2008 U.S. usage study, which showed a substantial drop in print references, mostly but not completely offset by online Yellow Pages usage growth. Print references, measured for YPA by KN/SRI, dropped about 8 percent…
Thanks to everyone who came out to L.A. for the Marketplaces 2009 conference this week -- and to everyone who followed us on the blogs and Twitter. We had a great time. Here are some top-line takeaways. 1. The vertical…
Thanks to everyone who attended Marketplaces 2009, and a special shout out to those who took part in the Twitter conversation. You can check out most of the tweets from the show here. Elsewhere, Andrew Shotland talks about the value…
Oodle CEO Craig Donato led off day three of Marketplaces 2009 describing how classified advertising has gone through an evolution over the past five years, progressing from simply importing them online, to making them searchable and finally today integrating classifieds…
Vertical networks can leverage their knowledge of their consumers to sell marketers wide-ranging research and media programs, according to Active Network CEO Dave Alberga, who keynoted at the Marketplaces 2009 conference in Los Angeles. Alberga, a former Citysearch executive in…
Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti, in a keynote at Marketplaces 2009 in Los Angeles, stressed that there are four things local sites need to focus on: being "more local," "mobile," "social" and "balanced." “Local is really an evolution,” he said. “Now…
Promotional services that boost SMBs run the gamut from coupons to prizes. The most popular are free offers, discounts off total amounts, and prizes/free gifts, said Matchpoint CEO Peter Adams, who was speaking at Marketplaces 2009. Adams noted that when…
AOL Yellow Pages has greatly benefited from search engine optimization, with 50 percent of its traffic coming from SEO, according to Chris Spanos, GM, local search, who was speaking today at Kelsey’s Marketplaces conference in Los Angeles. “We have a…
At the end of the second day of Marketplaces 2009, my colleague Matt Booth made a statement and then asked a follow-up question. He said, "most of what I've been hearing from the podium is optimistic. Don't people realize that…
