Google is adding Wildfire to its social-oriented suite of business services, paying "about $250 Million," according to a source cited by The Wall Street Journal. The San Francisco-based company provides social media analytics for 16,000 customers, ranging from large SMBs…
Facebook investor and press events have become spectacles unto themselves, where distilling signal from noise is a tricky task. But that's what we'll flesh out here in the aftermath of the company's first earnings call post-IPO...a call that featured an…
Our inaugural SMB Digital Marketing event keeps building and building. We’re being welcomed to Chicago for the Sept. 17-19 event by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and have already announced key speakers, including Dex One CEO Alfred Mockett, Constant Contact CEO Gail…
As we may have mentioned, this will be the year that Foursquare starts to more directly monetize the local engagement on its mobile app. Just a week after its Local Updates announcement, today it goes further down the monetization path by…
We’ve calculated that more than $287 Million has been invested in more than 20 transaction marketing players. The investment reflects the inherent opportunities in transaction marketing, which is a synergistic mash of loyalty programs, offers, reputation management and the "big…
During last month's MLM San Francisco conference, we tried do break the mold of conference formats in lots of ways. One thing we did differently was a song performed by longtime friend and Cox Digital Solutions exec Leif Welch. A…
What happened to the theory that Facebook Credits would become a universal virtual currency, competing against the likes of PayPal and others? Facebook very quietly closed the program down a few weeks ago, reverting to a more standard model that…
Though BIA/Kelsey's LCM 15 survey suggests that SMBs are still sluggish to adopt mobile websites (fewer than 10 percent) or other forms of mobile marketing, we believe mobile momentum will finally accelerate as business owners' personal comfort with the device…
Indoor mapping and navigation service Aisle411 has announced a deal with national drugstore Walgreens to map the interiors of its 7907 locations. Those of you that attended our MLM SF conference may remember the demo given by Aisle411 CEO Nathan…
We never get tired of saying it: SMBs represent the biggest marketing segment and the greatest opportunity in the local arena. We’ve watched the Yellow Pages evolve quickly to reflect this reality; and everyone else joining in: Groupon, Google, Facebook…
Mobile local ad network Verve Wireless just launched a new program that lets its local publisher partners (i.e. newspaper apps) extend their reach through a broader network of national publishers. The idea is that they can get additional distribution by…
Today at IAB's Mobile Marketplace Conference in NYC, I had the chance to catch up with YP's David Kurtz about a new ad unit the company announced. Kurtz has been no stranger to our own conference stage and editorial, as…
In a move that is surprising a lot of people, Marissa Mayer, arguably the face of "local" at Google, will leave immediately to take the top job at online media company Yahoo. The appointment as Yahoo's new president & CEO,…
The website development firm vSplash is playing in a fertile field with its Buzzboard product, a tool that enables local media salespeople to use the quality of small business digital presence as a starting point for a sales conversation. The…
New Zealand's Yellow Pages Group had named current Managing Director Chris Armistead as its new CEO, replacing Scott Pomeroy, who held the job on an interim basis. Pomeroy, formerly CEO of Local Insight Media, will remain on the company's board…
As major players such as Google, Groupon, LevelUp and Square position themselves as next generation payment processors, the role of banks and other financial institutions in the emerging payment is a little unsettled. The financial institutions are potential giants here --…
As we round the corner on 2o12's half-way mark, the mobile local space continues to move rapidly. Following our January predictions (some of which have already come true), we took some time to now revisit the biggest trends driving mobile…
Two schools of thought have broken out about loyalty programs. The first is to build a collective currency for points or other loyalty incentives that can be used anywhere in the network. This is the approach taken by players such…
Amazon has reportedly purchased UpNext, the five-year-old, 3-D mapping and directory service that now provides "clickable building"-oriented maps for more than 50 cities, including 23 that are enhanced in depth. The service has experimented with a number of features, including…
MerchantCircle.com released findings today from a survey that revealed 50 percent of small-business owners follow political candidates or related organizations on Facebook. Fourteen percent of respondents follow these groups on Twitter. The survey comprised more than 6,000 U.S. small-business owners.…
