Local Matters today launched its localguides.com beta. The site will focus on delivering a richer local search experience. It was clear when I saw the site earlier this year that CEO Perry Evans and team spent considerable time and energy…
NBC-Universal has unveiled DigPhilly, a city site designed to complement WCAU 10, an owned- and-operated station (and the homebase for the president of NBC O&Os). The site is serving as a template for NBC-U's other O&Os, so the stakes are…
As my colleague Mike Boland noted this morning, the new version of Citysearch is finally out, and it's a good effort that is appropriately heavy on video and personalization. The change coincides with new leadership at the company. Jay Herratti,…
WCAU-TV, NBC's owned and operated station in Philadelphia, is launching DigPhilly, a city site, reports today's Wall Street Journal. The site isn't yet up and running, but a teaser features buttons for "learn," "do," "share," "find" and "shop." The Journal…
MerchantCircle may be best known as the bad boy of telemarketing for a negative marketing scheme that went awry last fall. But the eight-person Rustic Canyon start-up promises it has mended its ways and points to a growing base of…
Back in 1999, Microsoft sold a small business called Sidewalk because it didn't fit into its core software business at the time. In a lengthy story in Sunday's New York Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admitted: "but Sidewalk was really…
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (sub required) about a dilemma that is starting to face many newspapers amidst falling revenues and readership; the need to divert finite editorial resources on local rather than global coverage. The article examines The…
As Peter Krasilovsky reported last week, Citysearch will establish new Atlanta-based sales digs. Kevin Newcomb over at Search Engine Watch points to a ClickZ article today about the expansion. The company hopes to have 180 sales (inside, outside and national)…
IAC's Citysearch has opened an inside sales center in Atlanta as part of a major sales push that also includes the development of a national sales team. There are currently 60 inside sellers in the center, and more than 150…
There has been a lot of talk in the past week over some of the apparent challenges facing local destination sites. Last week, BackFence endured a major downsizing, including the resignation of cofounder Susan DeFife (past writing on BackFence and…
Microsoft announced today that it is partnering with aerial and satellite image provider GlobeXplorer to enhance Virtual Earth with 400,000 square miles of U.S. high-resolution aerial imagery coverage. Virtual Earth is built on Microsoft's MapPoint Web service and is the…
The departure of BackFence CEO Susan DeFife amid the layoff of 12 of 18 staff members brought in a flood of comments to my personal site. Here's a selective summary. Dick Larkin, the Small Business Commando, kicked off the comments,…
Last week we had the chance to speak with MapQuest about a series of upcoming announcements (then under embargo). The first of those happened late last week with the company's mobile search platform enhancements. Today MapQuest announced the release of…
MapQuest announced today that it will enhance its MapQuest Mobile product and make MapQuest Navigator available on BlackBerries from Sprint and Nextel. MapQuest Mobile is a mobile local search platform available on any cellphone, which requires only a free download.…
Just in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, Dash Navigation said it will integrate Yahoo! Local features into its dedicated in-car GPS system. The announcement basically recycles statements made by Dash execs at DEMOfall in…
Success models for city sites have been elusive. But entrepreneurs still believe they can provide a local edge to city sites that can't be done by portals like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Ask and AOL. And they hope their "not-so-secret sauce"…
As we wrote about briefly last week, AskCity has launched today. I will get a chance to play around with the new features today and will provide more detail in this week's Local Media Journal. In the meantime, Loren Baker…
