Google Gets Wikified
The Google personalized search developments that we wrote about in July have been launched.
Insights From Home Services Heavyweights
Two real success stories in the home services category shared the stage this afternoon on the "Home Services Visionaries" panel, offering two different perspectives on how to make money from creating a local home services marketplace, built on a foundation…
YPG Deal With My Virtual Paper
This just in. Canada's Yellow Pages Group has announced a deal with My Virtual Paper, a start-up that has developed a process for extracting and indexing deep content from SMBs' offline business papers -- brochures, fliers and so on. CEO Manoj…
How Are Traditional Media Making the Online Transition?
This morning's session at ILM:08 on Leveraging Traditional Media Online was an eye-opener in many respects. It was striking, for example, how aggressively NBC is embracing the idea of following the audience wherever it can get its attention -- at…
Citysearch’s Compelling Revamp
Citysearch has just completed a full revamp of its product and strategy that it hopes will position it in the long-term battle for local. Elements of the revamp include a more intuitive interface, an embrace of social media, a major…
Mark Canon on How to Be a Good Symbiot
Mark Canon, president of U.K.-based Yell.com (part of Yell Group) kicked off Interactive Local Media 2008 today with an insightful, and at times esoteric, presentation that challenged much of the conventional wisdom that has driven organizations making the transition from…
IAC’s Kara Nortman on Local Media Valuations
IAC Vice President Kara Nortman, speaking at Interactive Local Media 2008, provided both a dose of reality and a glimmer of hope about where media companies in the local marketplace are headed. Nortman’s view of what is working well included sites…
Booth: Uncertainty Is Fertile Ground for Interactive Local Media
The Kelsey Group's Matt Booth kicked off the Interactive Local Media 2008 conference here in Santa Clara, California, with a focus on SMBs' perceptions and actions related to their media spend. To help frame the discussion, Booth used examples from psychology, in particular…
YouTube Overlay Ad Sighted
Following up on last week's post about YouTube's launch of new overlay ads, I finally saw one today. I managed to get a quick screen shot before it disappeared (see below). It was an ad for Mystery Science Theater's Star…
Angie’s List Gets $18 Million in New Funding; $66 Million Raised in All
Angie's List, the premium, user-paid directory of local business reviews, announced today that it has raised $18 million in new capital from Lighthouse Capital Partners. The site has now raised $66 million in total, including $13 million in 2006 from…
Yelp Traffic Stats Suggest Broad Local Usage
Yelp is often dismissed as a bar and restaurant site for recent college grads in San Francisco. But site usage released by the company suggests it has rather broad usage and shouldn’t be so readily pigeonholed. The site also says…
More Overwrought Yellow Pages Coverage
We've written before on how media and blog coverage of Yellow Pages can't seem to find a fair balance between Pollyanna and Chicken Little. OK, in fairness, there aren't many Pollyannas writing that Yellow Pages is shipshape with not a…
Off to Santa Clara
We'll be in Santa Clara, California, all week for the Interactive Local Media 2008 conference, which starts Wednesday. We'll do our best to cover the world outside the conference walls, but most of the blogging here will be about the…
AT&T Ups Hispanic Ante With Seccion Amarilla
AT&T Advertising Solutions has announced a partnership with Hispanic publisher Seccion Amarilla to sell Hispanic advertising into select Seccion Amarilla directories. "AT&T is always focused on enhancing our directories to best serve our business and residential customers in the diverse…
Guidespot Provides Local Guide for ILM
Local Matters' city guide platform Guidespot (profiled here) has built a local guide for next week's Interactive Local Media conference. It includes lots of things to do, see and eat in Santa Clara (when you're not completely engaged at the…
YouTube Launches New Overlay Ads
YouTube has just announced from the NewTeeVee Live show here in San Francisco that it will offer advertisers a new platform to place ads within video windows. These will take up 20 percent of the overall video window and will…
BIA Roundtable: Revitalizing Radio
BIA Advisory Services held a webinar to discuss the state of local radio, and the steps the industry needs to take to revitalize itself. BIA President and CEO Tom Buono set the stage with some daunting figures that show radio's depressed…
Urban Mapping Releases Public Transit API
Urban Mapping has released its latest API that taps into its database of 60 public transit systems in the U.S. and U.K. This will be available for developers of online and mobile mapping and local search applications. Transit information could…
NPR to Take a Stab at Hyperlocal
National Public Radio is going to try anew to rev up hyperlocal on the Web sites of its affiliates, according to a paidContent.org interview with incoming CEO Vivian Schiller, who was recruited from a leadership position at NYTimes.com. Schiller is…
Mobile Local Search Gets Some Love From Apple
Lately, a portion of iPhone television ads have featured local search applications. The other day we pointed out the UrbanSpoon ad. Now there is an ad for Loopt, the social media app that lets you see where your friends are…