In December, we discussed the implications of Groupon's pact with public Wi-Fi network provider JiWire as a potentially significant next step for social commerce -- hyperlocal group buying that leverages geotargeting to serve nearby deals to connected customers. The partnership has…
Angie's List, Kudzu and The Washington Post's new ServiceAlley are providing group buying promotions for home and trade services. But is group buying the right paradigm for home and trade services? Regional Help Wanted Cofounder Eric Straus says no. Instead,…
Today I am excited to announce that BIA/Kelsey has greatly enhanced its focus on social media to include dedicated coverage on our Local Media Watch blog and a new Continuous Advisory Service called Social Local Media. BIA/Kelsey Analyst Jed Williams…
Local Insight Media President and CEO Scott Pomeroy has resigned, effective Friday. Pomeroy was replaced as interim CEO by Scott Brubaker, a director at the turnaround firm Alvarez & Marsal, and since October 2010, LIM's chief restructuring officer. This move…
Yesterday I had the chance to talk to Foursquare GM Evan Cohen. A former Jupiter analyst and Bebo exec, Cohen was brought aboard last year to help steer the ship amid rapid growth. The wide reaching discussion hit upon the…
Everyday Health, the health portal with 26 million unique visitors coming from its 25 brands, including Revolution Health, Mayo Clinic and Drugstore.com, is going local via Health Deals, a group buying site. The site will leverage the company’s extensive email…
It's a well-cited stat that almost 200 million Facebook users access the network monthly on mobile devices. That's out of a total user base that is approaching 600 million (1/10 of the planet). At the Inside Mobile Apps conference in…
Leads for home and trade and real estate come in many flavors. Some come from intuitive URLs. Reply.com, a marketplace for local and category specific leads, reinforced the latter today, acquiring FastRoofingBids.com, FastRoofingLeads.com and LeadToRealty.com. Reply.com CEO Payam Zamani, in…
Facebook created quite a stir (again) with the recent projection that its global revenues could surpass $4 billion in 2011 ... the majority coming from small businesses that are self serving. Now Twitter is abuzz, as eMarketer predicts that top-line income will triple…
We’ve just announced the initial lineup for ILM East in Boston, March 21-23, which follows hot on the heels of our Interactive Local Media 2010 conference in Santa Clara -- possibly the largest local event ever, with 681 attendees. ILM…
One of the bigger questions is how the local portals will fully leverage the emerging social deals platform, with deal a day, coupons, flash sales, et al. Local.com, which reaches 22 million unique visitors via its destination site and network,…
It's been an active week for The Washington Post Co. First, it added to its portfolio of vertical sites with the launch of Service Alley. Now, it is hatching a subsidiary brand -- SocialCode -- to act as a full-service Facebook…
When Amazon made its deal to invest $175 million in LivingSocial, it wasn’t entirely clear how Amazon played in the local deal space. Sure, Amazon has its own non-local deals. And it owns Dallas-based Woot, a product-based deals provider. Still,…
Among the most challenging but potentially lucrative verticals is “Legal.” Long dominated by legal listings leaders such as Martindale Hubbell and Reuters Thomson, legal has opened up a little with the rise of social media and social media driven review…
Alt weeklies have certainly taken a hit from city guides (and especially from classified sites such has Craigslist). There has been a great deal of consolidation in the space. Yet the biggest consolidator, Phoenix-based Village Voice Media, with 14 local…
On average, people only move every six years or so. So there isn’t likely to be as strong a list of reviews of real estate agents as there is for pizza. But that hasn’t stopped Zillow from adding reviews of…
The Washington Post continues ramping up its vertical strategy, launching Service Alley to provide leads for home and trade professionals. The site, which is a standalone and not directly linked to Washingtonpost.com, follows the launch of other Post verticals, such…
Many national retailers have operated Facebook pages for years, and now local businesses are on-boarding at an alarming rate (BIA/Kelsey’s LCM 14 survey revealed that 48 percent of SMBs already have a dedicated page). These stats augur social shifts 2011:…
My monthly Search Engine Watch column is up. It takes a closer look at our recent forecast and why search is the fastest growing revenue source among mobile ad formats. It has a lot to do with the increasingly vaunted…
Just days after consolidating Adify and Cox Cross Media into the integrated advertising network Cox Digital Solutions, the company is making waves again. This time, it's acquiring in order to expand scale by scooping up IB Local Network from Internet…
