Online/Interactive

In the current issue of Local Media Journal, we break down the Q4 earnings announcements of major U.S. newspaper publishers. You probably know the story; circulation and revenues are in decline, while online assets continue to show growth. To add…

John Battelle reported today that Yahoo! has upgraded MyWeb 2.0. Users can now search "everybody's tabs," which basically expands the social search aspect of the service. MyWeb along with Yahoo!-owned del.icio.us could be central elements to Yahoo!'s overall "folksonomy" strategy…

I met with Steven Marder this morning, CEO of Eurekster. These guys were way ahead of the "social search" curve but confused users and the marketplace with their early positioning. People saw them as a complicated Google/Yahoo! competitor.They're really an…

Seattle-based Zillow, which apparently stands for "zillions of pillows" (or that's the genesis of the name/URL), launched today. The site is a very polished and sophisticated new entrant in the increasingly competitive online real estate market. Its primary — and…

Also in the "real estate file" is a new partnership between Spot Runner and Cendant Corp. Cendant is the parent of many familiar travel and real estate brands. For example, Cendant is the world's largest franchisor of real estate brokerage…

The DEMO conference, which has been described as a dating service for funders and start-ups, is under way in Phoenix. There's nothing inherently local about the show, but some companies that may in one way or another have an impact…

According to a piece in MediaPost (reg. req'd), PPCall provider Jambo has announced that it will enable PPCall for LA Weekly:The first slate of ads will be in the Feb. 9 issue, and will focus on Valentine's Day services, including…

I had heard a rumor earlier in the week that Yellow Book was buying Click Forward. Before I saw the release Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal confirmed it.Click Forward was started by alumni of WebVisible, formerly SME Global Solutions.…

Thanks again to John Battelle for pointing out that Google has gone "public" with its program to allow advertisers to buy access (via auction) to print advertising in some very high-profile magazines: As you may know, as part of Google's…

Google is integrating its Google Talk/IM functionality into GMail. It doesn't replace Google Talk (because there's no VoIP yet). But it does: Potentially differentiate GMail Offer the first (that I know of) browser access to IM/chat Potentially expose more GMail…

As user reviews and other forms of user-generated content become a bigger phenomenon online so does the prospect of what might be called "review fraud." Word of Mouth guru Pete Blackshaw of the newly formed Nielsen BuzzMetrics points me to…

Here's a long eWeek piece raising the question, "When o when will users take to the mobile Web in earnest?" Indeed, until they do there can be no effective mass mobile marketing. My belief is that the user experiences that…

Advertising in video games has been on our long-term radar screen. It will take a while before it has relevance to local, but it's an interesting area where a lot of development is happening, and where an ad revenue stream…

A new forecast adds further fuel to the local shopping fire (sorry). According to this article, Jupiter says: The amount of money consumers spend online is expected to increase 75 percent by 2010, with the Internet influencing nearly half of…

A9's CEO (and last year's Drilling Down keynoter), Udi Manber, who famously told me "local search is not a solved problem," is apparently leaving for Google, according to John Battelle. This is obviously a blow to A9 and raises a…

What is FON? No it's not a Spanish dessert — that's flan — although it is based in Spain. FON is an effort to build a global Wi-Fi network of hotspots with existing broadband connectivity — "members" are referred to…

While I didn't actually watch the Super Bowl, I did of course watch the commercials here. (You can also watch and vote for favorites at AOL.) I counted at least three ads touting mobile content: Motorola/Verizon, Sprint and ESPN; in…

Just because it's fun to speculate about such things — and there's a history here — I'm repeating hearsay. SiliconBeat discusses an unsubstantiated rumor about a possible Google acquisition of now tainted "social networking" (read: dating) site Friendster. Back in…

With online newspaper revenues and traffic on the rise, newspapers are increasingly putting more emphasis on their online news production. More specifically we're seeing an overhaul of many newspaper operations to change the mind-set that online is an afterthought. Its…

Yesterday we wrote about network-affiliated local television stations using their Web sites as distribution points for network content. NBC Universal has announced it will redesign all of its local station Web sites to handle multimedia content such as video and…