The upgrade of the popular MSN Spaces, renamed Windows Live Spaces, had a bumpy start. According to the official blog: "We know we disappointed a bunch of you with the issues we had in our rollout last night. There was…
McClatchy's acceptance this week of a reduced share in investments held by Tribune/Knight Ridder/Gannett (TKG) marks the end of a noted newspaper partnership among heavyweights. Under the deal, Tribune and Knight Ridder exercised their rights to buy out Knight Ridder's…
Revenues increased 7 percent over first-quarter 2006 (or $200,000 better than guidance) to $3.4 million. Local search revenues were $1.7 million for the second quarter, representing growth of 46 percent (or $100,000 better than guidance) versus the previous quarter. The…
As we wrote about here, some local advertisers have begun to use social networks (MySpace mostly) to push promotional messages. The Lost Remote blog picked up a story yesterday that revisited the topic.
Yesterday, AdMission Corp. announced that Hearst Newspapers has chosen it to provide its suite self-serve ad placement products in the publisher's print and online products. This includes AdMission's Classifieds, Spotlight Ads, Directories and Marketplace solutions. In our recent newspaper report,…
A group of Japanese electronics manufacturers, including Sony, Matsushita, Sharp Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi, announced plans to develop a joint standard for Internet televisions. The televisions, which are rumored to hit sales floors next year, will make viewing rich…
The NAA released data that showed newspaper Web site visits in May reached 56 million unique visits. This is an increase over both April and June, when newspaper visits were 54 million and 54.4 million, respectively. Further, about 55 million…
Merchants that take out enhanced listings on Yahoo! tend to improve their impressions and clicks by 2X, and increase their all-important ranking on the page, said Yahoo! Local GM Paul Levine, in a Small Business Commando Tele-Seminar that also featured…
Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Washingtonpost.com will provide links to stories that relate to its own. This goes beyond columnists linking to various articles around the Web when they apply to a topic and represents an…
IAC/InterActiveCorp's development of Ask is priority No. 1, and a key part of that development is the integration of Citysearch's listings and content, according to IAC execs speaking Aug. 1 on the company's quarterly earnings call. "There is no question…
UrbanBaby Cofounder John Maloney wrote in to comment on my "Local Baby Site" post yesterday. I had complained that I was "confounded" by CNET's acquisition of UrbanBaby.com, since CNET is basically a real good tech site that's heavily skewed toward…
A new social networking site called Eons.com launched earlier this week. The concept: a Web site for 50-plus Americans. It includes an obituary database and alert notification when someone, well, passes.Jeff Taylor, the founder of Eons.com, told Reuters, "The death…
AP and BusinessWeek are reporting that newspaper groups including Gannett Co., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. have agreed to increase their ownership percentage in CareerBuilder.com, ShopLocal.com and Topix.net.The deals place the following valuations on each of the respective businesses: CareerBuilder…
Both R.H. Donnelley and Verizon posted their second-quarter and year-to-date figures today, and each revealed some challenges. We will write up both sets of results in detail for next week's Local Media Journal. In the meantime, here are some quick…
Four million babies are born in the U.S. every year. Hence the interest of two e-commerce portals in local baby sites. Just last week, UrbanBaby.com, an e-mail-oriented baby-care tip sheet, was sold to CNET, and LilaGuides, a print-oriented local baby…
Sallie Mae announced that it has signed an agreement to purchase Upromise. Sallie Mae services more than 10 million customers totaling US$130 billion in loans. Upromise launched in 2001 and has grown into one of the largest direct marketing companies…
Monster's deal to partner with the new owners of Philadelphia Media Holdings "would work with other newspapers," but probably makes more sense with papers in smaller markets, Monster CEO Andrew McKelvey told Reuters. McKelvey also said the Philadelphia deal was…
Interchange Corp. and Verizon SuperPages will partner to deliver SuperPages.com customers via Interchange's Local.com search engine. Here is the press release.
Just saw a note from media analyst Ben Mogil of Westwind Partners that takes issue with the conclusions of a recent report from Veritas suggesting that Yellow Pages Group's core print directory business is imploding, citing a sharp reduction in…
College newspapers are often overlooked as part of the local ecosystem. Local newspapers in college towns such as Lawrence, Kansas, and Austin, Texas, vie with college papers (a little) for advertising. And classified vendors such as LiveDeal and Ad2Ad have…
