Backfence may be the biggest laboratory out there for community networks. It reads like a newspaper written by citizens, and its hyper-local coverage features community-by-community Yellow Pages, special sections, business reviews, event calendars, classifieds, blogs and user-generated photos. The company…
Zvents, a Web 2.0 app that enables local sites to manage events, including events inputted by users, announced today that it has received $7 million from several VC firms, including Vantage Point Venture Partners (a funder of ReachLocal). It also…
Google's announcement that its self-serve system will be enabled for print newspapers gives newspapers an easier way to reach small businesses. Newspapers, of course, are famously challenged to apply their relatively limited sales forces to anything smaller than a car…
Geosign, a privately owned publisher of dozens of local and vertical services, including TrueLocal, has teamed with Go2 to get a foot in the door of the nascent mobile directory marketplace. Go2, founded in 1999, was a pioneer in mobile…
Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper publisher with 110 titles, is rolling out "information center" guidelines that it calls "the newsroom of the future." In its essence, the Information Center downplays hard news in favor of more community touch points. It…
Every now and then you meet someone in business that makes you think it is not just about business; someone you imagine you will have the joy of working with for the rest of your career. For me, Greg Parker…
Google is said to be considering a major deal to either partner with Clear Channel's radio stations or buy the stations outright, according to RBC Capital Markets (as reported by Jeffrey Yorke in Radio & Records, a radio trade pub).…
In the past, financial analysts covering the newspaper industry haven't paid much attention to online results. They're more focused on quarterly results, which don't have much to do with online. Indeed, despite several years of strong growth from online services,…
This isn't officially confirmed, but Yahoo! is apparently close to finalizing a major deal that would pair its lagging HotJobs recruitment site with a consortium of "non-CareerBuilder" newspapers. The deal has been in the works since at least July. Apparently,…
Hearst Corp. is listed as a lead investor in Jingle Networks' new US$30 million financing round, along with Goldman Sachs. Jingle is the two-year-old provider of 1-800-FREE411, an ad-supported, "free" directory assistance service. Other investors are repeaters from earlier rounds.…
Are most of the businesses in your address books ones that you would endorse? How about the mentions in your calendar of restaurants where you are meeting colleagues? How about the businesses in your photo software that you have bothered…
Online classifieds revenue is OK. But since it typically represents just a fraction of a fraction of existing print dollars … you'd rather base your growth on display ads. Especially, targeted, premium-priced ads that represent "new dollars" for the company.That's…
The San Diego Union-Tribune has used Citysearch as the default city guide for its SignOnSanDiego Web site since 1999. The arrangement, one of several Citysearch struck with newspapers in that time period, gave The UT exclusive rights to sell Citysearch…
Starting today, CBS is providing Yahoo! with local news clips from its 16 owned and operated stations in exchange for a big chunk of the Yahoo! local news page, links back to the local station sites and a revenue share…
GateHouse Media, a rollup of community newspapers and shoppers operating in 285 markets, has hired Melinda Gipson from the Newspaper Association of America's New Media Federation. Gipson has been a cornerstone of the New Media Federation since February 1995 —…
It is depressing for online newspapers that Yahoo! and other portals generally outpace them in their own communities. But not so fast, says Shawn Riegsecker, a founder of Centro, an ad network dedicated to localizing ad buys for national marketers,…
Judy's Book cofounder Andy Sack posts very candidly about the difficulties of launching a review/IYP site. Sack, who also founded Abuzz, one of the original review sites, and worked on Firefly, knows something about this subject by now. Founded in…
Citysearch has been around the local scene for so long that it often gets overlooked. But the IAC division plans a significantly higher profile in early 2007, with a relaunch of its site, a big push on local and national…
Insider Pages founder Stu MacFarlane has been replaced as CEO by Mitch Galbraith, a veteran of Yahoo!'s small-business division who was recently brought in as VP of advertising. The change at the top appears to have been initiated by Insider's…
And they just keep plugging away and plugging away at microsites. A new Bay Area company, Smalltown, has launched a microsite service in San Mateo and Burlingame that serves as kind of a commerce-oriented city guide/Yellow Pages. The service has…
