BIA/Kelsey is expanding the geographic focus of its conference business with the addition of ILM Asia 2011, which takes place Oct. 25-26 Singapore. The event is a joint production of BIA/Kelsey and the Asian Directory Publishers Association. ILM Asia will…
For the few of you who still think Twitter is a fad, the term tweet was just minted with most recent class of inductees to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Other words that made the cut include "social media" and "crowdsourcing" (those weren't…
SinglePlatform, which places restaurant search info such as menus, specials and photos on search engines and social and mobile media, has raised $3.25 million. The new raise is led by DFJ Gotham Ventures with participation from New World Ventures, First…
Businesses do really well online when they create “events” -- as local promotion companies ranging from Zvents to Active.com have discovered. Home Depot has classes. Those are events. Brew pubs have free samples. Those are events, too. And so are…
While deals are getting most of the attention right now, coupons remain a substantially larger player in the promotions business, says Steven Boal, CEO of Coupons.com, who was keynoting at BIA/Kelsey’s Deals 3D conference this week in San Francisco. Boal…
An afternoon session at Deals 3D focused on social media's impact on deals. The panel titled "Social Media and Deals: The Saturday Night Play" featured Cityvoter CEO Josh Walker and Signpost CEO Stuart Wall. Signpost features "deal scouts," which are…
Facebook touts itself as a platform that allows and encourages partners to further build out its social graph. In Deals, it has now found its most significant partner yet, inking a deal with American Express to push socially curated deals…
Writing about Google+ wasn’t an option. When an 800-pound gorilla makes a frontal assault on Facebook, Skype AND Twitter, sending the tech punditry into breathless buzz and sparking curiosity about the potential seismic effects on social networking, well, that warrants…
Yell announced today that it acquired Znode, an e-commere software development company in a deal valued at $19 million. Znode will be incorporated into Yell Group as part of its new consumer division, Yell Connect. Znode's technology will serve as…
We work with online and mobile services every day, so it is easy to lose perspective on what “civilians” really do with such services. There is no better reality test for the progress of technology in our society than going…
Not a day passes without the question "Can Google Get Social?" popping up in the tech punditry. After several ill-feted answers (Buzz, Wave), the search leader has a new social reply: Google+. Actually, it's the Google+ "project." VP of Social…
You know the saying: “Pretty soon, we’re talking about real money.” So how big is the deals space? Groupon COO Margo Georgiadis suggests it’s after the $150B local ad market. Mark Fratrik, BIA/Kelsey’s own economist, forecast the U.S. deal space…
Jed and I haven't been blogging much because behind the scenes we have been researching and writing reports on Social Local Media business models. Those reports are now starting to come out and I am pleased to announce the publishing…
So, do we buy shares in Groupon? We don’t provide investment advice, of course, but as we consider its prospects from a non-investment angle, we’ll be watching for answers to the following eight questions – none of which, unsurprisingly, is…
NBC’s local websites for its 10 owned and operated stations have effectively lowered the average age of users from 44 to 33, boosted the average time spent on site to 12 minutes, and grown its user base to 10 million…
The purchase funnel that takes consumers from awareness to transaction and retention has been an article of faith among marketers for many years. TV advertising, for instance, is “upper funnel.” Yellow Pages, at the point of sales consideration, has been…
Sensis, in association with the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA), commissioned research into how Australian people and businesses are using social media. The Sensis Social Media Report contains survey results from 803 Australian consumers and 1,944 businesses. Sweeney Research…
Businesses should post on their Facebook page three times a week. That’s the word from Emily White, Facebook’s director of local. In an interview with USA Today, White says: "The general rule is, you're in pretty good shape if you're…
A couple of weeks ago at the Social Loco event held at Mission Bay Conference Center (same place we’ll be holding our Deals 3D July 18 and 19), I met up with longtime industry innovator Justin Sanger. No doubt you…
Dealfind, a Toronto-based daily deal site, has raised $31 million as it strives for rapid growth to reach 100 markets in Canada and the U.S. The site, which has sold 806,199 vouchers since its launch in 2009, is currently operating…
