Next time you refer to your cellphone, pause and ask yourself, "Is this a Sprint phone or a Nokia phone?" Seems a bit trivial, but how wireless phone subscribes think of their phones will become an increasingly material matter in…
Since there have only been 13 unassisted triple plays in the history of major league baseball, it's highly unlikely that we will see one in this World Series. Nevertheless, a lot of the talk recently has been about a different…
We recently learned that Telfonos de Mxico (Telmex) has acquired Enlace Spanish Yellow Pages, the largest independent Spanish-language Yellow Pages publisher in the U.S., for an undisclosed price. Telmex, Mexico's leading telecom and owner of that country's dominant Yellow Pages…
In the online shopping space, the only differences between the players are on the surface, in their branding and marketing. Typically, shopping engines list retail feeds in search results on a pay-per-click basis, which means consumers find the same results…
Are most of the businesses in your address books ones that you would endorse? How about the mentions in your calendar of restaurants where you are meeting colleagues? How about the businesses in your photo software that you have bothered…
Hearst Corp. is listed as a lead investor in Jingle Networks' new US$30 million financing round, along with Goldman Sachs. Jingle is the two-year-old provider of 1-800-FREE411, an ad-supported, "free" directory assistance service. Other investors are repeaters from earlier rounds.…
Online classifieds revenue is OK. But since it typically represents just a fraction of a fraction of existing print dollars … you'd rather base your growth on display ads. Especially, targeted, premium-priced ads that represent "new dollars" for the company.That's…
The San Diego Union-Tribune has used Citysearch as the default city guide for its SignOnSanDiego Web site since 1999. The arrangement, one of several Citysearch struck with newspapers in that time period, gave The UT exclusive rights to sell Citysearch…
Local online shopping site NearbyNow (which we wrote about here) is expanding. The company announced today that it will extend its service to 20 U.S. cities, including Portland, San Francisco, Virginia Beach, Tucson and Spokane. This will happen through an…
I've been hearing more and more, and becoming more and more intrigued, by the multi-player game-like virtual world of Second Life. This Popular Science article literally dives into the phenomenon and alludes to some of its local advertising potential. Here…
This just in. Verizon has OK'd the spin-off of its Yellow Pages unit, Verizon Information Services, as a separate public company. We knew this was coming, but now it is official. If you thought Verizon was an unusual name, try…
Canada's Yellow Pages Group has launched its second hybrid vertical product — a mixture of magazine editorial content and Yellow Pages headings — this one for the family-care vertical. Here is a link to YPG's press release announcing the new…
Starting today, CBS is providing Yahoo! with local news clips from its 16 owned and operated stations in exchange for a big chunk of the Yahoo! local news page, links back to the local station sites and a revenue share…
It is depressing for online newspapers that Yahoo! and other portals generally outpace them in their own communities. But not so fast, says Shawn Riegsecker, a founder of Centro, an ad network dedicated to localizing ad buys for national marketers,…
GateHouse Media, a rollup of community newspapers and shoppers operating in 285 markets, has hired Melinda Gipson from the Newspaper Association of America's New Media Federation. Gipson has been a cornerstone of the New Media Federation since February 1995 —…
I was at the Association of Directory Publishers meeting in Virginia last week. There was the usual bread-and-butter how-to content (distribution efficiency, for example) plus a little of the usual red meat incumbent bashing for the independent publisher faithful, though…
LinkedIn, the service that greases the wheels of virtual networking, is extending that concept to the Yellow Pages, by offering a directory of local service listings, with a layer of social networking. Here is a write-up on Red Herring. LinkedIn…
Citysearch has been around the local scene for so long that it often gets overlooked. But the IAC division plans a significantly higher profile in early 2007, with a relaunch of its site, a big push on local and national…
Judy's Book cofounder Andy Sack posts very candidly about the difficulties of launching a review/IYP site. Sack, who also founded Abuzz, one of the original review sites, and worked on Firefly, knows something about this subject by now. Founded in…
Being a frequent YouTube user, I just stumbled upon this. Chad and Steve, the cofounders of YouTube, have sent a message to the world about the Google acquisition in what other form but a YouTube video clip. Either these guys…
