Amateur sports and lifestyle services are great vertical categories that are generally worth many times more in their own wrapping than in a magazine, newspaper or Yellow Pages. Active Networks, whose leadership and original funding have some roots from IAC,…
Yellow Book today joined Canada’s YPG in launching AgendiZe, the service that captures Yellow Pages and classifieds info and puts it on up to 66 media platforms for recall. On deck for implementation is Belo’s Dallas Morning News. I wrote…
If we’ve learned anything in 10 years, it’s that building SME Web sites is one tough business. There’s huge churn and heavy competition. Increasingly, there is also more focus on SEO, SEM and promotions. And “easy” paths to riches via…
I am in the middle of researching an Advisory on major metro markets, why they are such a challenge for Yellow Pages publishers and what, if anything, they can do to reverse the slide. In the course of doing research…
Service referral sites like ServiceMagic and Angie’s List have gotten some traction. But by no means are they dominating the business. What will it take? Ashish Mohole, cofounder of start-up GetVendors.com, thinks the key is to guarantee that users get…
YP.com’s shareholders overwhelmingly approved the decision to adopt the LiveDeal name. According to the recent press release, “YP Corp.'s interest in a name change is a reflection of the company's continuing commitment to building a first-of-its-kind hyper-local, Web 2.0 marketing…
The National Hockey League and its 30 teams, unable to score exposure on major media networks, are going local and on demand, with extensive game, team and community programming being launched next season. The service, produced by NeuLion, a technology integrator…
The New York Times (subscription req'd) ran a story that will, at the very least, hurt the morale of a competitor and more likely put it out of business. In Monday's paper, Brad Stone wrote that falling advertising is "threatening…
Constant Contact, the leader among e-mail marketing services for small businesses with 120,000 customers mailing out 500 million e-mails a year, has filed for an IPO. In the S1, the company says it is looking to expand its services beyond…
You learn a lot from talking to local advertisers. Occasionally, I get to leave my ivory tower and give a speech or appear on a panel in front of local advertisers. Generally, I'm talking “Local Local.” A couple of weeks…
Yesterday I had the chance to speak with the leadership team at BuzzLogic, which has developed a platform for tracking buzz around any topic or company. The primary venue for this buzz is the blogosphere, where there has been a…
In the wake of the hard knocks reported by community journalism sites such as Backfence, and social review sites such as Judy's Book and Insider Pages, it seems to be a good time to reassess the category, starting with a…
One big trend we've noticed for both Yellow Pages and newspapers is a renewed emphasis on the dynamics of cities served. We used to worry all the time about local dynamics as city guides and others tried to figure out…
Steve Jobs' Macworld Keynotes are among the most awaited tech events of the year, as some of the products historically announced (iPod, for example) have represented inflection points in consumer technology. Today at Macworld, Jobs introduced the long awaited iPhone.…
The 360 Blog breaks down some upward trends in online marketing and predicts their fate in the coming year. The takeaway: More online spending as others have predicted (see longer term forecast in The Kelsey Group's Global Yellow Pages Forecast);…
The Internet, e-mail and instant messaging are great ways to jumpstart word-of-mouth "conversations." But just 4 percent of word-of-mouth conversations (which are just short of a "lead") are ultimately passed off via e-mail, and 3 percent through IM. Another 1…
