Online/Interactive

Kudzu: I don't have a lot of time to blog this. I spoke with Kudzu's Tom Bates last week. Kudzu is a "services directory" (read Internet Yellow Pages) that is a little over a month old. It's operated by Cox…

Search Engine Strategies, which Jupiter just sold, rolls into beautiful San Jose, CA, this week and there are sure to be dozens and dozens of announcements (I know of about five or six off the top of my head) to…

This article spills the beans before the official announcement (today). The system is Verizon's own, for which it is reportedly seeking a patent. Other IYPs will likely follow. Here's the release. The most recent Local Commerce Monitor (SME) data to…

No time for analysis. Here's the release. With YPN and more players trying to dislodge AdSense, things are getting more interesting and competitive.

Sometimes I'm even surprised by the level of interest and attention being given to maps of late. But the data keep reminding me of how mapping applications are so widely used and, dare I say it, beloved by consumers. Our…

While most people don't know what "RSS" stands for, online editions of newspapers may begin developing their own RSS readers to preserve the "integrity" of their content. RSS readers, such as MyYahoo, threaten to further "disintermediate" newspapers, as news aggregation…

In one corner is Yellow Pages Association president Neg Norton, who writes about the profile of consumer-users of IYP products (based on the assn's earlier study with comScore). Norton extolls the advertiser benefits of IYPs vs. search engines (more qualified…

Finally caught up with Yahoo! PR folks -- Gaude Paez in this case. She helped clarify for me that the new Yahoo! Publisher Network isn't just about blogs; it's for any small or medium-sized content publisher (right now by invitation…

There is so much news and there are so many announcements flying around these days I just have to duck much of the time. However, I feel compelled to point out a fact of some significance that got almost no…

Going to write more about this in TKG's Local Media Journal. AOL beta launched a new metasearch travel site, Pinpoint Travel. It doesn't replace AOL's own travel channel. In fact, it doesn't carry the AOL brand (part of the strategy…

Here's a very interesting post, based on an eDiets' earnings call. Basically it says that prices are going up in the world of paid search/online advertising and that may drive the company to do more traditional media buying. For some…

News Corp.'s purchase of social networking and music promotion site MySpace could only have been motivated by a desire to acquire social networking/community tools and the teen/young adult demographic that frequents the site. This AP article suggests that Murdoch may…

As others have already reported, InfoSpace's Dogpile metasearch engine added MSN Search to its layered results. Here's a visual tool where users can compare the uniqueness of search results across the major engines. Dogpile, with its ability to segregate results…

The Kelsey Group's overly simplistic model of the electronic world looks like this. Content can be information, advertising, video, etc.; the delivery of that content might be cable, DSL or wireless; and the device which is used for access could…

First there was Live 8 and now the Space Shuttle: "Nearly 433,000 people simultaneously watched NASA's webcast of this week's space shuttle launch."The significant difference between watching this type of event on conventional TV and online is that online you…

The new Google Maps mashups are coming now by the day . . . Here's PremierGuide's (local search platform provider) customer list plotted on a Google Map. Here's a site -- ApartmentRatings.com -- that has integrated Google Maps and apartment…

Yahoo! is moving agressively beyond the browser and the desktop as part of an apparent strategy to be the most useful information and lifestyle management service around: "Yahoo! seeks to provide online products and services essential to users€™ lives, and…

I've believed for a while that My Yahoo! was a powerful model for personalization. To varying degrees the other major portals/search engines are now pursuing a similar strategy. Google recently added more feeds to its personalized home page. Here's MSN's…

The folks at PEW have come out with another report that has some generally intuitive but important information for those who are eager to see online trends slow or reverse (read: some in traditional media). Not going to happen. The…

Seattle-based Marchex, which is the parent of TrafficLeader, the SEM/SEO firm behind several YP (and newspaper) simplified search marketing programs, has announced the roughly $30 million acquisition of IndustryBrains, which operates a vertical/contextual ad network. At the end of April,…