Newspaper News Bits
A few interesting developments have come out of the newspaper world over the past few weeks. As we reported last week, The Wall Street Journal offered the print paper and online access for free all day yesterday. The paper has…
What Are Your Top Online Products?
The always influential Michael Arrington at TechCrunch lists the top online products (I hesitate to use the term "Web 2.0") that he can't live without. It's interesting to skim the list and see his reasons for these picks. Though I'm…
Click-to-Call: A Case Study
MarketingSherpa has a case study of Jenny Craig's integration of click-to-call. Like many local service oriented businesses, the nationally oriented diet product powerhouse relies on phone calls to drive sales. This need applies differently in different categories, but many local…
SME Ad Challenges and Opportunities in ’07
Search Engine Guide editor Jennifer Laycock writes about how small businesses fit into the online advertising ecosystem. A prescriptive look at online ad buying strategies for SMEs (in going up against the big guys), it dives into lots of the…
SME Advertising on Craigslist
ClickZ has an interesting article on the practice of advertising on Craigslist. Essentially this entails small businesses advertising products or services in the form of a Craigslist posting. I wrote about this for Search Engine Watch a few weeks ago.…
10 Local Trends That Greet the New Year
Year-end reviews are always kind of arbitrary. For sure, a lot of overlap occurs from year to year. So much of what we consider "the '60s," for instance, really happened in the early '70s. But clearly, r/evolution is happening in…
A Look at Underlying Mapping Technology
Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land points to an interesting St. Louis Post Dispatch article about the software and development processes from the likes of Navteq that sit underneath Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, MapQuest and others. It's an interesting…
Jupitermedia Pushes Into Recruitment
PaidContent reports that Jupitermedia has acquired online tech job Web site JustTechJobs.com, signifying a possible move into online classified verticals. It's not completely clear whether this is a strategic acquisition or a financially driven one (paidContent suggests the latter), although…
Google: The Parlance of Our Times
Gary Price reports (via Search Engine Land) that "Google" has ranked second in Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year survey. The ranking pertains to the use of Google as a verb (i.e., to "Google" someone or something). Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" took…
AT&T-BellSouth Merger Appears Ready to Clear Hurdle
Just saw this Associated Press article that indicates a compromise may be in the offing to get the AT&T-BellSouth merger approved. The deal had been held up by the objections of Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission. The agreement may…
FCC Green-Lights AT&T-BellSouth Merger
With little time to spare in the current year, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has approved the merger of AT&T and BellSouth. This clears the way for the creation of a US$5.8 billion directory publishing entity, which will cover much…
Online Real Estate Continues to Rise
Following up on the post earlier this week about vertical search, here is a breakdown of the rise in usage of real estate Web sites from the Pew Internet & American Life Project (via eMarketer).
SME Volume Ramping Up
The Small Business Administration has released its annual report on the small business economy. According to the SBA, a new high was reached in 2005 of 25.85 million small businesses in operation. More from Inc.com.
Google Newspaper Ad Pilot Program a Success
The Washington Post reports that Google's initial program to sell remnant newspaper ad inventory has been a considerable success thus far, and that it will expand the program. This will be a key ingredient in Google's overall plan to be…
YellowPages.com Adds Mobile Feature
We got this press release today from YellowPages.com announcing it has added a "send-to-mobile" feature that enables users to text a search result to their mobile phones for future use. The press release illustrates the feature's utility with the example…
Triple Play Heats Up in Key Markets
Things continue to heat up in the world of triple play. AT&T last week announced that it will begin to roll out its U-verse (IPTV, wireless, data and voice bundle) package on a limited basis in the San Francisco Bay…
Online Ad Growth in ’07
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 Verticalization of Local Search II
I read an interesting blog post last week at Bill Slawski's SEO by the Sea. He takes a step back to reaffirm that search and local are a great fit for each other, especially for finding things offline to buy…
Finding Post-Holiday Local Deals
Yahoo! Tech writes about some of the ways you can sniff out local post holiday deals on electronics. There will surely be a torrent of sales in the coming week as retailers try to move excess holiday inventory especially…
A Turbulent Year for the Newspaper Industry
Editor and Publisher Senior Editor Joe Strupp lists the top newspaper industry events of the past year. In related news, Scarborough Research did a relatively small sample study that shows online newspaper readers are more likely than the average Internet…