Making good on the promise of the acquisition, eBay is apparently now putting "Skype Me" modules on eBay to connect buyers and sellers in real time (testing in Europe). This makes eBay's local reach potentially much greater than it is…
Donna Bogatin, CEO of VIPOffers.com and a speaker at last year's ILM show on "hyper-local" sites, pointed out an interesting article on a TV campaign being used (and tracked) by eBay drop-off store QuikDrop to build awareness and drive inquiries…
When we wrote our "social networking" White Paper back in late 2004, the question on everyone's minds then was, "but where's the business model?" "Social networking" is a term that has less and less meaning now that "social media" is…
One of the big benefits and differentiators of MSN's new adCenter product was to be the metrics/targeting surrounding demographics and other information on consumers that it plans to offer to advertisers. Now Google has added demographic targeting in addition to…
Here's a MediaPost write-up (reg. req'd) of data from a piece of TNS research in the U.K. that shows people (almost all ages) are spending somewhat more time online than watching TV: The study, based on a February survey of…
I'm late writing about this but before SES I was in New York as a panelist in Yahoo!'s first Search Light Award event. It brought together four finalist ad agencies to show how they'd integrated search marketing into their broader…
Google has apparently agreed to pay the equivialent of $90 million (yikes!) to settle a click fraud class action. Here's the AP story. According to third-party data compiled by eMarketer, SEMPO found that "the percentage of advertisers who say that…
Bob Tedeschi's New York Times "e-commerce report" column (reg. req'd) yesterday highlighted the personalized shopping potential of RSS. We first wrote about the mainstream importance and potential of RSS and alerts as a shopping tool last year: Paid search has…
Yesterday, Cingular (soon to become AT&T wireless, again), the largest U.S. wireless carrier, announced it would launch a new video service for a couple of new phones. For a flat fee of $20 per month consumers can access clips from…
SiliconBeat writes about a new wiki platform for the masses, Wetpaint. They're still ahead of the mainstream consumer marketplace, but community and online collaboration tools continue to gain momentum. And because we couldn't resist this issue (again), we've just added…
Classifieds aggregator Oodle has launched a partner network and API for syndication of its listings. The first two members are Lycos and Backpage.com, a group of community classified sites operated by local media, including weekly newspapers, radio and TV stations…
I have seen the future of online shopping and it's ShopLocal. OK, so maybe that statement is somewhat overblown, but it's essentially true. Newspaper-owned ShopLocal just relaunched with a new and improved design and interface. The site offers both online…
Some have speculated that AT&T in its new, hypothetical post-acquisition position as the nation's dominant broadband provider might be tempted to pursue fees from companies (e.g., Google, Vonage, etc.) that use lots of "bandwidth." This is the essence of the…
AOL's MapQuest announced a new OpenAPI and a contest to create the best mashup using it: As part of the OpenAPI launch, MapQuest also announced a Developers Challenge, in which Web developers can compete to build the most creative mashup…
Microsoft is busy rolling out a flurry of search-related upgrades. A dizzying array of tools and features are coming via Live.com and Live Labs/Ideas. Also the company bought Onfolio and is going to integrate the functionality into a toolbar and…
Just the latest in what appears to be increasing M&A activity, NBC Universal announced that it is buying iVillage (soon to be Women.com) for $600 million. That marks three deals in four days: Fox Interactive Media on Friday, AT&T on…
According to a story in today's New York Times AT&T (formerly SBC) is near a deal to acquire BellSouth:AT&T is expected to pay about $65 billion for BellSouth, the country's third largest phone company, which operates in a nine-state region…
And away we go ... In the most recent installment of their ongoing small business research, Wells Fargo and Gallup found (no surprises here) that small businesses preferred free word-of-mouth referrals and rated them more effective than paid advertising. (This…
A couple of sites are reporting on the beta launch of Ingenio's Ether. It's essentially a billing and payments infrastructure with scheduling and phone number provisioning. It allows anyone who sells advice/expertise to do so remotely over the phone using…
From Techcrunch ... FIM CEO Ross Levinsohn announces he's bought one of the companies on the list (scroll) and may buy more. More M&A to come ... The company was NewRoo (a personalized news aggregation site). SiliconBeat has more.
