Online/Interactive

Far ahead of its newspaper industry owners, news portal Topix.net has launched a redesigned site and added user comments and community features, turning the entire site into a blog of sorts. Here's more from SiliconBeat.

Local retailer aggregator and Google Base partner StepUp announced that it had received a $6.6 million series B round. From the press release: StepUp Commerce, Inc., the Internet€™s local shopping service, today announced it has closed a $6.6 million funding…

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, there were 5.1 billion total search queries in October. Here's how Nielsen recorded search engine market share (U.S.): Google -- 48 percent Yahoo! -- 22 percent MSN -- 11 percent AOL -- 7 percent Ask -- 3…

Interchange's consumer destination site Local.com will be offering a del.icio.us-like tagging/bookmarking feature powered by LookSmart's Furl like The N.Y. Times). This is the latest in a series of moves (with more coming) to beef up the content and features of…

Yellow Pages Group (YPG) is reportedly buying Canadian classifieds publisher Trader Media Corp. for C$436 million in cash and equity. This puts YPG on similar footing as Australia's Sensis, which owns classifieds publisher Trading Post. Classifieds and Yellow Pages content…

Many others have pointed to this. But here's Google's first mainstream marketing effort (PBS TV commercial).

Thanks to my colleague Mike Boland for pointing out this post on the Search Engine Watch blog (Gary Price), which points to Dirson, about Google possibly buying Oslo-based Opera. (Opera has an approximately 1 percent market share.) There's also lots…

So that's my contribution to the bad headline puns making the rounds this afternoon. ...The acquisition proves, among other things, that a bad URL is no obstacle to success today. Seriously, it's yet another social media play at Yahoo! (not…

It's almost impossible to keep up with all the developments going on in the local space right now. One that has quietly happened without any fanfare, apparently, is the relaunch of the Yellow Book site. Without having tested the data…

Here's a Bob Tedeschi piece in the The N.Y. Times (reg. req'd) about some of the new initiatives (i.e., Froogle Local and CNet) to provide offline inventory information to online shoppers. The central problem is infrastructure and accuracy. StepUp was…

In the category of too much news to cover was this older item that appeared in ClickZ (and covered also in SEW blog). Yahoo! has entered a joint venture with Seven Network in Australia and New Zealand. The largest TV…

Here's a piece from CNet saying that Yahoo! and blogging software provider Six Apart are today launching a product that allows Yahoo! small business customers/users the ability to create blogs on Six Apart's Movable Type software and then have them…

As recently as this spring (or summer if you consult the Pew report), there were skeptics arguing that broadband penetration will stall in the U.S. Not only is it not going to stall, it's going to eventually be free. (Consumers…

MediaPost (reg req'd) writes about a new Borrell report about the potential rise of "independent local sites" as another threat to the newspaper industry (just add them to the list, right?). Well yes and no. T'he MediaPost piece focuses on…

I did a quick interview on CNBC about PPCall today (they had a bunch of technical problems so it may not run). The interviewer was using the terms "click-to-call" and "pay-per-call" interchangeably. There's confusion about the distinction between the two.…

After having 24 hours to play with Windows Live Local (WLL), my experience is mixed. The "Bird's Eye" photograghy is stunning (I can't wait for more coverage beyond the current 12 U.S. metro areas). The personalization features (Scratch Pad, etc.),…

Nielsen/NetRatings reported that traffic rose 61 percent at online comparison shopping sites in the week ended Nov. 27, compared with the week ended Oct. 30. Regular online retailers by comparison saw a 35 percent rise in traffic during the same…

I got an update yesterday from news aggregator Inform.com. These guys launched several months ago with a host of super-charged features that proved well beyond what most users want from a news site. Product manager Julian Steinberg acknowledged this in…

I read in PaidContent that family-oriented city site GoCityKids.com had been acquired by Viacom-owned cable channel Nickelodeon. I met with founder Clare Ellis years ago when the network of sites had just launched (in 2000). Her concept was great --…

That ever-intrepid patent sleuth Gary Price over at Search Engine Watch has found a Microsoft patent application covering "electronic Yellow Pages." Gary posts the abstract: Abstract: A method and system for allowing a regional service merchant that is outside of…