Local online shopping site NearbyNow (which we wrote about here) is expanding. The company announced today that it will extend its service to 20 U.S. cities, including Portland, San Francisco, Virginia Beach, Tucson and Spokane. This will happen through an…
Being a frequent YouTube user, I just stumbled upon this. Chad and Steve, the cofounders of YouTube, have sent a message to the world about the Google acquisition in what other form but a YouTube video clip. Either these guys…
There has been no shortage of coverage and commentary on Google's acquisition of YouTube this week. Without content assets or unique technology, the acquisition has been viewed with a skeptical eye by many in the media and analyst communities. This…
Related to last week's discussions on the challenges and opportunities of user-generated content (and somewhat related to yesterday's news of Google's acquisition of YouTube), eMarketer has some positive data on the revenue-generating potential of UGC.
After many days of swirling rumors about a Google acquisition of YouTube, the companies announced today that this will happen. Read the press release here, a recording of the conference call that followed the announcement here, and more to come…
Related to my post yesterday, Hitwise has some interesting data (via Greg) on the growth of UGC directories (i.e., Yelp, Judy's Book, Insider Pages, etc.) versus that of IYPs. It's an interesting comparison that supports the notion that UGC is…
As the previous post pointed out, college towns can represent strong markets for hyper-local community sites because of the activism (conducive to user generated content), buying power (sometimes), and high turnover of apartments, furniture, books, merchandise etc. My former colleague…
While trying to think and type as F-16s roar past my window (it's fleet week here in San Francisco), I'm beginning to notice an uptick in the conversation surrounding user-generated content in local search. Also known as "social search" (as…
Four months after it landed on the West Coast, hyper-local Web site Backfence.com has established its first community site in the Midwest. The Evanston, Illinois, site will join Backfence's community sites in the D.C. area (the site started in Reston,…
Today I had the chance to sit down with Mike Hogan, CEO of online coupon platform provider ZiXXo, to follow up on a discussion we had at DDC. We previously wrote about the company here. ZiXXo is working on a…
... according to comScore. Here are the latest numbers. As we've pointed out in the past, actual local searches could be greater. Local searches are defined in this study as "searches conducted by consumers on the local or directory (Yellow…
Mobile search has been a growing topic in the local media space and was batted around during an afternoon breakout session on voice and mobile directories. We are still in an experimental stage of mobile search, defined by hardware restrictions,…
Ike Harris, president of BellSouth's Advertising & Publishing Group, kicked off Day 2 of DDC with a keynote that stressed the opportunities afforded by changing industry and cultural dynamics — thought by some to be a threat. There is a…
DDC today was packed full of sessions — the morning containing mostly keynotes and the afternoon divided into smaller breakouts. After introductory remarks from John Kelsey, conference chairperson Charles Laughlin took the podium to lay the groundwork for the biggest…
The Directory Driven Commerce conference kicked off tonight with a session to discuss many of the points raised in Charles' previous post. Earlier in the day, we spent some time at the Santa Monica offices of emerging SEO/SEM provider for…
Intuit and Google announced a series of landmark deals today at 12 p.m. PDT that have the potential to transform Internet marketing for small and medium-size businesses. The deals involve several Google components that will be bundled in the U.S.…
Flying in the face of reports and general conjecture throughout the media and blogosphere that newspapers and traditional media companies have done a lackluster job in establishing online ad models, is a report from private-equity group Veronis Suhler Stevenson described…
Apple's introduction yesterday of a device that will wirelessly pull content from a computer to a television set, has an eerie relevance to my conversation last week with Jason Holloway, CEO of online video start-up Dovetail.tv. One of the challenges…
Earlier this week I had the chance to speak with Jason Holloway, CEO of online video start-up Dovetail.tv. The company's sweet spot is the "middle" of the tail — between mass-market broadcast content (head) and the YouTubes (long tail) of…
For those of you still in front of your computers on Friday afternoon before the long weekend, Business 2.0's "Future Boy" has a great column on a countercultural influence — best exemplified by the Burning Man festival currently raging on…
