Jon Brod, EVP, AOL Ventures Patch.com, AOL's hyperlocal network, will grow from its tally of 30 sites today to "hundreds" by the end of 2010, per an internal memo read by Business Insider (and that we saw on www.netnewscheck.com). The…
Yodle, the third-party SMB reseller, has now divided its business into “Yodle Sponsored” and “Yodle Organic.” The formation of the latter division, which has been live for a month with 150 clients, is a recognition that SMBs are increasingly relying…
The money is moving quickly into the third-party SMB reseller space. ReachLocal has applied for a $100 million IPO, which could go out this spring. In hopes of similar paydays, its rivals are raising hordes of cash. Yodle, for instance,…
What if consumers could personalize the ads and content they see when they open utility sites such as Google, or portal sites such as Yahoo? That’s the idea behind Optini, a new 12-person company based in Utah that has developed…
The new breed of content aggregators is among the biggest bets in online media. These companies are assembling content from hundreds of thousands of contributors, optimizing it on the search engines so it is easily found and syndicating it. Demand…
IAC’s ServiceMagic reported today that it saw a 51 percent boost in 4Q revenues, growing from $25.3 million in 2008 to $38.2 million in 2009. The boost was accompanied by 21 percent growth in the number of home and trade…
DataSphere, a hyperlocal enabler and sales agent for local media companies, says that Northwest TV and radio giant Fisher Communications has now sold more than 1,000 hyperlocal advertisers using Datasphere's neighborhood-specific content and sales system. The system is now in…
Zvents, the events lister, is reporting 35 percent year over year growth with over eight million unique visitors, largely due to its powering events for 285 local media brands, including major newspapers and the NBC owned-and-operated TV stations. CEO Ethan…
Yelp has been on a roll, and is now reporting that it gets 29 million unique visitors a month. Given that, the company’s immediate challenge is to move beyond its core base of restaurant and shopping reviews and dive deep…
Gannett has always seemed to be a likely directory player. In fact, the world's largest newspaper publisher owns a small group of print directories. It also provides a white-labeled online directory product to its media properties. But as directories, search…
Marketplaces 2010 takes place just seven weeks from now in San Diego (March 22-24). We are putting the finishing touches on the program, and have added MANY exciting new speakers in just the past few weeks. The event is totally…
Monster Worldwide has bought HotJobs from Yahoo for $225 million. It will also be in charge of Yahoo's recruitment content in North America for the next three years, bringing in perhaps another $100 million for the life of the deal…
In the quest to produce good leads, no stone goes unturned. In coming years, one of the best sources of leads may be online scheduling (or "appointment calendars"). Former YPG executive JP Lion is working on scheduling solutions with Maxipage.…
The debate about the future of journalism reached the height of silliness last year when journalist turned banker Steven Rattner suggested that The New York Times be subsidized by the government like the BBC. But the economics of journalism has…
Vertical businesses that have relied on Yellow Pages and newspapers and other classified channels aren’t always seeing the same performance-based results that they might expect in the Google age. But many of them also aren’t likely to become keyword experts,…
Allmenus.com, the online ordering portal with 255,000 restaurant menus around the country and 3,500 online ordering relationships, will focus on specific local markets via a new partnership program that gives a portion of revenues to newspapers or other local promotional…
Center’d started its mission in June 2008 like most city guides, albeit one largely aimed at women and planning. But over time, the local space has changed. And the site itself has refocused to meet “the missing pieces” in local.…
Examiner.com, the Philip Anschutz-backed site that calls itself “the insider source for everything local,” says it is likely to pass 30,000 active contributors, or "Examiners," within days, and 85,000 by 2011. The current tally includes 1,234 active contributors in L.A.,…
Here’s a question: How long would directory publishers sit back and let new companies such as RedBeacon, AlikeList and others disrupt the leads economy for SMBs with search and socially driven features such as Twitter and Facebook? Or Google, with…
Bono and Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman As widely reported last week, Yelp has confirmed that it will receive a $25 million investment from Elevation Partners, which is widely known for the involvement of U2 frontman Bono among its seven partners. …
