The departure of BackFence CEO Susan DeFife amid the layoff of 12 of 18 staff members brought in a flood of comments to my personal site. Here's a selective summary. Dick Larkin, the Small Business Commando, kicked off the comments,…
BackFence CEO and cofounder Susan DeFife has resigned from the company, amid a major downsizing. Co-founder Mark Potts will serve as the company's interim leader as the company looks to solve what he calls "BackFence 2.0." Potts initially said that…
I'm a little late on this, as we approach the football playoffs, but Miller Beer has been targeting local consumers this season by providing local team content and commentary on MillerLite.com, while linking to the teams' Web sites. The Miller…
ShopLocal, the sales aggregator from Tribune, Gannett and McClatchy, is normally aimed at middle-aged women coupon-cutters. But in a bid to extend its audience, and get a little buzz, a couple of young Turks at the company have created a…
Just in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, Dash Navigation said it will integrate Yahoo! Local features into its dedicated in-car GPS system. The announcement basically recycles statements made by Dash execs at DEMOfall in…
Election advertising has been a key revenue driver for TV and radio stations, and newspapers, but hasn't really moved over to the Web. Mostly, the Web is used by campaigns for organizing and fund-raising. But OhioElects, a site launched by…
Year-end reviews are always kind of arbitrary. For sure, a lot of overlap occurs from year to year. So much of what we consider "the '60s," for instance, really happened in the early '70s. But clearly, r/evolution is happening in…
Online recruitment spending has surpassed print recruitment spending for the first time, according to my friends and former colleagues at Borrell Associates. The line was crossed in 4Q 2006 (now), and online now accounts for US$5.9 billion, while print accounts…
It is the end of the year, and the executive turntable is spinning a little faster. Today, it was TrueLocal head Jake Baillie's turn to announce his departure. TrueLocal, a spin-off from GeoSign, provides unique, local company URL information for…
Simon Greenman, R.H. Donnelley senior VP of digital strategy innovation and products, confirmed today that he is stepping down and likely to be replaced by Sean Green, 36, who was promoted to VP of strategy and business development in October.…
The difference in lookups between print Yellow Pages and Internet Yellow Pages and local search continues to be a big one. It is also a major reason why the channels haven't converged as much as conventional wisdom would dictate. Just…
Newspapers have always been a pied piper kind of industry, where everyone follows the lead of a few influential players. Right now, the pied pipers are whistling for the recruitment partnerships offered by Yahoo! HotJobs or Monster. There are definite…
The Internet, e-mail and instant messaging are great ways to jumpstart word-of-mouth "conversations." But just 4 percent of word-of-mouth conversations (which are just short of a "lead") are ultimately passed off via e-mail, and 3 percent through IM. Another 1…
Canada's Yellow Pages Group is going full steam ahead with Hello Yellow, its ad-sponsored directory assistance service available at 310-YELO (9356). But the service probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere without teaming up with local 411 services, according to VP of…
Success models for city sites have been elusive. But entrepreneurs still believe they can provide a local edge to city sites that can't be done by portals like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Ask and AOL. And they hope their "not-so-secret sauce"…
If newspapers are to grow, they're going to have to leverage their local, regional and national credibility to reach into advertiser segments where they don't have much of a presence today. This means B2B and SME. But somewhere it is…
Comments came into my personal site last week suggesting that AutoTrader CEO Chip Perry, in his keynote at Kelsey's ILM conference in Philadelphia, may have hyped up his company's considerable lead over Cars.com and other auto portals. "Based on my…
The power of road mapping and direction sites like MapQuest and Yahoo! Maps is now being channeled by HopStop, a New York-based start-up providing the same type of complete info for walkers and subway and bus strap holders in major…
There are calls in the press today for more online mapping standards after the tragic disappearance of CNET Senior Editor James Kim. Kim was on a family vacation last week in Oregon when he took a little-used logging road in…
IAC's Ask.com rolled out AskCity this week in a bid to use IAC's content to differentiate itself from Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL. The site, which succeeds AskLocal, proves to be an excellent local research tool and effectively integrates listings,…
