When we think of emerging local verticals, “green” is one of the most promising, as environmental concerns have pushed up the interest of consumers in having safe, healthy products that have minimal impact on the environment. MSN, Yahoo, Hearst and The Washington Post…
When Topix first came on to the scene in 2003, it primarily crawled local news. These days, the 30-person company has largely remade itself into more of a local portal, especially for smaller markets. It still isn’t profitable, but CEO…
Eventful, which competes with Zvents for leadership (and affiliates) in the fast changing local event marketplace, has just completed a new $10 million C round lead by Telefonica Capital. Also participating are alumni investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Bay…
We’re just about ready to go with Interactive Local Media 2008, which is Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It should be a very important, game-defining event -- and the first one for The Kelsey…
Neighborhood-level intelligence isn’t always easy to find, for residents, travelers or resettlers. We have neighborhood boundaries, courtesy of the sociologists and mapmakers at Urban Mapping. But other information can be scant. Now we have another view from the real estate…
Getting people to submit reviews is hard. We’ve seen incentives such as $5 coffee cards (a lot), $10 gas cards and direct donations to charity (Insider Pages’ current model). People complain that reports that are stimulated by such efforts aren’t…
Zvents, which is seeking to transform the events category to a broader “what, when and where” category that encompasses local entertainment, organizations and businesses, has announced $24 million in new funding from AT&T (i.e., wireless and Yellow Pages), Nokia Growth…
Fox Interactive Media’s MySpace is seeking to jump-start local and small-business advertising by launching a homegrown Self-Serve Ad Service. Initial advertisers are likely to be rock bands -- the first major segment to have adopted MySpace itself -- but the…
Local.com today announced a new program that will award local businesses with a new "Best of Local" designation in 15 cities and 20 categories. This will be solely based on user reviews and a formula that takes into account reviews…
CityVoter.com, a review and “best of” voting site that powers Web sites for TV stations and other traditional media outlets, has signed a new deal that will boost its count of Hearst-Argyle TV affiliates from five markets to eight. The…
Social bookmarking and news aggregator Digg has announced that it will integrate a new recommendations engine. This will track users' activity and recommend stories according to the behavior of other presumably like-minded users. This is mostly a filter to increase…
The latest nugget of data from Palore examines the average number of restaurants by state that have reviews written about them. Looks like Massachusetts takes the cake (sorry, bad pun). This is somewhat binary as it looks at restaurants that…
Some details have been released about Praized Media’s Local Conversations Organizer. Praized is a Canadian start-up launched by YPG vets Harry Wakefield and Sebastien Provencher, and Sylvain Carle, a longtime industry vet. Its tagline is “Trust Your Tribes.” In a…
Is there room for a new, locally oriented social network if it is more practical than Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, et al? That’s what Norwest Partners and Keynote Ventures are betting $6.5 million on with the launch this week of…
Local.com today announced it has added the ability for users to write reviews directly on the site. This will include ratings (five-star system) and reviews that registered users can submit and track over time. The question of reviews in the…
Classifieds have made their way to video (See RealPeopleRealStuff). But how about video on mobile phones? That’s a new effort being tried out in Portugal, where high-speed 3G phones are prevalent, but less than 40 percent of the population has Internet…
Rich Barton -- Mr. Vertical -- has added a new recruitment-oriented vertical to a lineup that now includes Expedia (sold), Zillow and Avvo. The new effort is Glassdoor.com, which provides recruitment-related information. It solicits and publishes detailed salary and bonus…
Among the developers of iPhone applications is The Associated Press. Featured during the relaunch of iPhone 2.0 today, AP’s Benjamin Moss, director of mobile products, said AP developed an iPhone app for its Mobile News Network in "just a few…
Since the social networking phenomenon began, I have been an advocate of the Yellow Pages developing a platform for niche social networks. Directories cover such a broad array of content that can be related to highly conversational topics, such as…
The final day of The Kelsey Group's Drilling Down on Local conference featured a keynote by Merrill Brown of MMB Media. Brown is an industry guru with a history of developing groundbreaking media strategies and operations. Among other things, he…
