Today I had the chance to talk to the management team at Fanminder, a start-up working on simple tools for local merchants to communicate with and reward customers. Similar to philosophies we've heard lately (such as PlacePop), this involves fostering…
Redbeacon, the six-person San Francisco-based service referral company, announced today that it has raised a heady $7.4 million in Series A financing from Mayfield Fund and Venrock. CEO and Cofounder Ethan Anderson tells us that the company needed such a…
This week Yellowbook launched a new ad campaign that pretty well captures the multiproduct sales approach that most of the world's major publishers are embracing in one form or another. The ads declare how the company has moved "Beyond Yellow"…
College students are a rich market for local businesses in college towns. Indeed, advertising has become more important to local SMBs as colleges increasingly compete for the business and try to keep students (and their money) on campus. CampusLive, the…
DexOne (the company formerly known as R.H. Donnelley) announced its first-half results this morning, and as with SuperMedia, there were signs of life amid otherwise negative results. The key number to watch for directory publishers is ad sales. DexOne's first-half…
A few weeks ago, we wrote about check-in fraud. Also known as "fake check-ins," this is the act of checking into a location -- using Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla or any number of quickly growing mobile check-in apps -- when you're…
Restaurants are among the top categories for group buying deals. Now OpenTable, the restaurant reservations service, is getting in on the game. On its blog today, OpenTable announced that it is launching a weekly “Spotlight” offer that provides diners with…
EMarketer reports today that the U.S. mobile video market will be just under $550 million this year, growing to $1.34 billion in 2014 (25 percent CAGR). This is divided between pay-per-download (75 percent), subscription based (18 percent) and ad-supported (6 percent)…
On Friday I attended TechCrunch's Social Currency CrunchUp on the Stanford University campus, followed by the swanky party on the veranda of the nearby August Capital. Though my live blogging efforts were thwarted by a bad connection on-site, there were…
EBay is pushing to do more to integrate the flagship auction site and its Marketplaces products with ProStores, its online storefront software company. The effort to integrate ProStores is part of a broader effort to integrate its properties (i.e., eBay…
The U.K.-based publisher Yell today announced it offers advertisers the ability to run targeted ads on Facebook as part of its NetReach ad syndication product, which features about 70 U.K. sites. Facebook is a significant addition to the network, with…
The Sacramento area is fast becoming Ground Zero for local blog networks. McClatchy’s Sacramento Connect, a project carved from The Sacramento Bee, is a content connector for 70+ area blogs and Web sites. It started incubating last summer and was…
