In a new WashingtonPost.com video, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talks on a wide variety of topics, including the future of print. “In the next 10 years, the world of media companies will be turned upside down,” he says. “There will…
Two news items caught my eye today as they relate to our ongoing coverage of interactive product placement in various entertainment media. First, Sony has announced a deal that will bring in-game ads to PlayStation 3 games. It will work…
Microsoft today expanded Search & Give, a program that rewards searches in the form of money sent to a preferred charity. After a user signs up for the program, a penny is donated for every search to a choice of…
Walmart.com is a national site without local pretensions. And the company’s stores themselves don’t really have much “community” about them. They generally don’t have bulletin boards or other things to bring the community together. But the giant retailer is now…
If Internet Yellow Pages can work together with search engines, it will be a major impetus to the growth in local online video advertising, contends Robyn Rose, VP of marketing for Superpages.com. Superpages has been an early mover with online…
Pegasus News, the hyperlocal site in Dallas owned by Fisher Communications, is a state-of-the-art site with local reporters and bloggers, lots of user-generated content and a full roster of other Web 2.0 capabilities. So what’s most important for driving traffic?…
This morning Idearc Media announced Scott Klein as its new CEO, replacing interim CEO Frank Gatto, who returns to his former role as executive vice president of operations. Klein comes from a technology and consumer-product background, and is currently an operating…
Om Malik reports that the hotly anticipated 3G iPhone, rumored to come out next month, will have GPS capability (by federal mandate). The provider is rumored to be Broadcom -- a big win for the chip maker, which only recently…
Some industry bloggers like to throw “Google” in the title to get some attention. For me, it is “Hyperlocal.” And somewhere in the middle of any discussion of hyperlocal is Rob Curley. The hyperlocal maestro has taken his Web 2.0…
There has not been all that much fresh coverage of the rumor, reported earlier this week, that Microsoft may acquire Yell Group, the U.K.-based international publisher with operations in the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain and Latin America. We have…
You’ve got to figure if anyone is going to lead the local revolution in the newspaper space it is going to be The Washington Post. To me, the paper signaled its seriousness about getting hyperlocal when it hired two of its…
CNET is reporting the rumor that MenuPages could be close to acquisition by an unnamed suitor. If past partnerships are any indication, it could be IAC/Citysearch. Or perhaps Yelp? Keep an eye out.
Nielsen has released figures on the top brands and top TV programs involved with product placement. This is an area that could represent lots of opportunity when the interactivity of the Web reaches the television (read: IPTV). We've already seen…
Local search platform provider Local Matters has just acquired a Facebook application-in-progress from online real estate player Point2. The app will be called Neighborhoods for Facebook and will allow Facebook users to network with others in their area and find…
ABI just released a report that projects a billion Web video viewers by 2013. This is presumably a unique monthly viewer count, which makes it about a 4x to 5x increase over current levels. That's a lot of viewers, but…
Several years ago, it looked like real estate brokerages might be marginalized by “Virtual Office Websites” (VOWs) that grabbed multiple listings service listings from the Web, using a licensed agent. They then acted as cut-rate sales agents to home buyers.…
Grazing the current crop of business news mags, I happened across the June 2 edition of BusinessWeek. The cover article, "Beyond Blogs," is on how social networking is changing key aspects of the corporate marketing tool kit. One of the…
Travelling abroad and keeping your job is pretty easy these days with seamless smartphone access. But I noticed a few things during a trip to London and Paris last week that gave me some food for thought. London • The…
Reuters is reporting a rumor that Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer has set his sights on Yell Group as his next acquisition target, which has led to a bump in Yell's share price. We don't know if this is true. It is,…
Yellow Pages Group in New Zealand announced two online partnerships geared toward extending visibility for its advertisers. The first partnership is with realestate.co.nz, New Zealand’s largest online listing site, and the second is with shopnewwzealand.co.nz, the leading online store featuring…
