LiveDeal, under new management, has moved away from its roots in Yellow Pages and classifieds, and begun a strategic focus on high-end SMB services. As part of its strategy, the company has been selling off many of its directory-related accounts,…
Cox’s Kudzu, a local service rating and review directory, announced last week that it has implemented Facebook Connect. Users can now share their Kudzu reviews with friends by signing in via their Facebook account. Previously registered Kudzu users can also…
There are many reasons why price comparisons for services aren’t generally done. (i.e., the difficulty of nailing down providers, price changes, the need for custom quotes in many categories). Generally, people should choose service providers on multiple criteria, not just…
Sears will try to leverage its identity with home improvement and repair with ServiceLive, a new leads provider for service pros that is being pitted against ServiceMagic, Angie’s List, DoneRight and others. The tagline for the service, which begins a…
Yesterday, I spent about three hours with Idearc Media CEO Scott Klein, who shared the vision he and his management team have for the company. Some of that vision is encapsulated in the rollout of SuperGuarantee, a major new initiative.…
TripAdvisor was one of those rare Web 2.0 breakthroughs where the power of the crowd created a viral energy all its own (and enough traffic to sell advertising). Now Stephen Kaufer, founder and CEO of TripAdvisor, along with Dan Saul,…
We're now contributing to The Huffington Post, starting with an article today on how the economy is affecting SMBs. It's truly a survival of the fittest scenario in the restaurant vertical. Read the entire post here.
OpenTable, the online restaurant reservation service, has filed an S1 with the SEC to raise $40 million. The company, founded in 1998 by former Citysearch President Thomas Layton, was launched as Easyseats.com. It currently has contracts with 10,000 restaurants in all 50…
IAC’s ServiceMagic, a leader in delivering leads to services, has purchased Bethesda,MD- based Market Hardware, which provides websites and search engine optimization for 2,500 SMBs. Market Hardware, which has 30 people, targets “high online spend verticals” that closely mirror ServiceMagic’s…
AdReady, the Seattle-based media placement firm and builder of display ad templates for SMBs, has long been on our list of “most interesting” local services. And that was before it signed white-label deals with The New York Times, Boston Globe…
FixR, a seven-person Boston-area site that bills itself as an “eBay for local services,” has launched. Developed with private funds, the site provides free listings for services and free bids for consumers, but expects to charge a “success” fee when…
Following Yodle's $10 million C Round funding announcement yesterday, I had the chance to talk to founder Nathaniel Stevens. The funding, for one thing, is a good vote of confidence for Yodle and its market opportunity, despite the current economic…
We’ve just announced the lineup for our Marketplaces 2009 conference, which is March 16-18 at the historic (and excellent) Century Plaza in L.A. We hope you find it as compelling as we do. It is probably a “must attend” event by any…
WebVisible and Nielsen's jointly produced research on local search shows there is still a gap between user behavior and SMB advertising. The annual survey was just released, including responses from 4,000 U.S. Internet users and 261 SMBs. Here are some…
Spas and salon advertisers are a huge focus for local sites. They’re a Top 4 selection for Citysearch, and also rank highly on Yelp and other sites. Now they are being specifically targeted by InnerRewards, a new health and wellness vertical…
Bakersfield Californian President and CEO Richard Beene says smaller advertisers will be receiving more and more focus by the independently owned paper -- something that many newspapers say, but few really do much about. In a note to employees discussing recent…
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…
Marchex, during its 3Q earnings call today, reaffirmed its focus on providing ad solutions for the local and vertical search space, noting that it currently works with 80,000 local advertisers via 110 local partner relationships, including AT&T and Idearc. The…
Broadband providers, especially those formerly associated with telco Yellow Pages, are trying to get back in the game of providing marketing services for small businesses. They’re looking to provide Web 2.0 directory-like profiles and search engine marketing services for small…
Are the small-business “home and trade service” advertisers that populate PennySaver and American Classifieds a good bet to buy search packages? That’s the question being posed by American Classifieds, the second-largest classified publisher franchise with 6,000 editions. The company signed…
