Speakers at last week’s Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco mused about the future of journalism with moderator John Battelle. “We’re living in an era of great change all over the place,” noted New York Times Digital Head Martin Niesenholtz.…
Consumers are likely to be more motivated to try out a local business if the offer is linked to a charity. That’s been the thinking behind charity based programs by Oodle and Insider Pages. And it is also the thinking…
All accounts from last week’s JD Power's Automotive Roundtable in Las Vegas suggest that Ford Group VP Jim Farley laid out a really compelling picture of how a major manufacturer looks at its opportunities in digital and especially social media.…
Local news blogs may have trouble making their economics work. But what if their content can be picked up and paid for by major media outlets? That’s the model behind the Chicago News Cooperative (CNC), a new organization of former…
Cablevision has made good on its threat to put the online version of Newsday behind a firewall, accessible only by print subscribers or online-only users willing to pay $5 per week. Classifieds will remain free. Newsday, purchased last May from…
Smelling blood at the presumed decline of Yellow Pages, a number of sites have launched that provide leads to local service SMBs. You've got Angie’s List on the membership side. And ServiceMagic, Tree.com's DoneRight, Sears’ ServiceLive and a number of…
JD Power, at its annual Automotive Internet Roundtable in Las Vegas last week, laid out a convincing case that Internet and mobile marketing has made major headway among local auto dealers. While digital media comprised just 7 percent of all…
CitySquares, the Boston-based city guide company, is prominently featured in the “Small Business” section of The Wall Street Journal today (subscription required). The subject? Its frequent use of volunteer advisors (something we have firsthand knowledge of, actually). The article boasts…
Hyperlocal sites are often run by earnest people who have just enough naivete about them to put in the hours and chase the dream, right? Former Yahoo and NJ.com exec Susan Mernit probably doesn’t qualify. But Mernit, a 10-year resident…
We've crossed the 40-speaker landmark for BIA/Kelsey's Interactive Local Media 2009 event. The show reflects renewed optimism in the marketplace, and has generated a lot of healthy buzz. ILM is the culmination of this year's research and analysis, and takes…
Speaking at TargusInfo’s recent Online Lead Quality Summit in Las Vegas, Senior VP and GM Greg Hanson said Tree.com is “taking a multichannel marketing approach that will provide synergies between all the brands. “There is a lot of engagement before…
If people repeatedly mention a restaurant or dish on Twitter, odds are it’s going to be because they like it, right? One or two mentions might be trashing it. But 20 to 30 will likely go the other way. That’s…
Vertical development is all about serving micro-segments that have been under-served by horizontal media such as Yellow Pages and newspapers. One area that’s been largely missed to date is the nail salon and hand care market. And that’s exactly the…
Matchbin, a venture-backed firm based in Bountiful, Utah, is banking on aggregating rural and exurban audiences by providing community media companies with a full slate of advertising and social tools, rather than just one-dimensional local search. The six-year-old, 40-person company,…
Newspapers have often had lobby stores selling T-shirts and other items. They’ve also long experimented with online stores. Reprints of the presidential election results sold especially well last November. Last year, The Philadelphia Inquirer launched an especially aggressive store that…
Geotargeting is one of several criteria that advertisers base their buys on. But as the technology has become more accurate, it has become increasingly standard. According to a study of the online display ads in four cities by comScore, roughly…
Angie’s List, the Indianapolis-based premium services directory that charges members to access and participate in reviews of local service businesses, said it has crossed the 1 million member mark. The threshold has been reached after a major ad campaign on…
MyBallard.com, one of five adjacent neighborhood sites in Seattle that make up Next Door Media, has won the Online Journalism Award for community collaboration. The OJAs are designed to promote the next generation of journalism. They have been run since…
NPR will work with a pilot group of a dozen NPR stations to create multimedia local news that will work online and on radio, thanks to new grants from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting ($2 million) and $1 million from…
A spoof is circulating around the Web that Local.com has been sold to Microsoft for $200 million -- a significant markup from the public company’s current valuation at $60 million. The spoof suggested that the valuation was based on Local.com’s…
