Looks like two of the largest self storage companies — Public Storage and Shurgard — will be combining forces. Public Storage announced that it will be buying Shurgard for US$3 billion. The combined company will have 2,100 locations in 38…
Bob Tedeschi's New York Times "e-commerce report" column (reg. req'd) yesterday highlighted the personalized shopping potential of RSS. We first wrote about the mainstream importance and potential of RSS and alerts as a shopping tool last year: Paid search has…
AOL's MapQuest announced a new OpenAPI and a contest to create the best mashup using it: As part of the OpenAPI launch, MapQuest also announced a Developers Challenge, in which Web developers can compete to build the most creative mashup…
SiliconBeat writes about a new wiki platform for the masses, Wetpaint. They're still ahead of the mainstream consumer marketplace, but community and online collaboration tools continue to gain momentum. And because we couldn't resist this issue (again), we've just added…
Some have speculated that AT&T in its new, hypothetical post-acquisition position as the nation's dominant broadband provider might be tempted to pursue fees from companies (e.g., Google, Vonage, etc.) that use lots of "bandwidth." This is the essence of the…
Yesterday, Cingular (soon to become AT&T wireless, again), the largest U.S. wireless carrier, announced it would launch a new video service for a couple of new phones. For a flat fee of $20 per month consumers can access clips from…
I have seen the future of online shopping and it's ShopLocal. OK, so maybe that statement is somewhat overblown, but it's essentially true. Newspaper-owned ShopLocal just relaunched with a new and improved design and interface. The site offers both online…
Charles Laughlin pointed out an article from the Nashville Business Times about Verizon's entry into that market. Kathy Harless identified Nashville as one of the expansion markets at DDC '05 in her keynote address. Here is the article.
Just the latest in what appears to be increasing M&A activity, NBC Universal announced that it is buying iVillage (soon to be Women.com) for $600 million. That marks three deals in four days: Fox Interactive Media on Friday, AT&T on…
A long list of potential suitors for Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion has emerged that invokes Claude Raines from "Casablanca": "Round up the usual suspects !" The parade of private equities whose names are listed among those at least interested in…
The story is all over the financial press today that AT&T will acquire BellSouth for US$67 billion. Based on 2005 revenues, the combined Yellow Pages divisions of the two companies will have total revenues of about US$5.8 billion. I'd say…
According to a story in today's New York Times AT&T (formerly SBC) is near a deal to acquire BellSouth:AT&T is expected to pay about $65 billion for BellSouth, the country's third largest phone company, which operates in a nine-state region…
From Techcrunch ... FIM CEO Ross Levinsohn announces he's bought one of the companies on the list (scroll) and may buy more. More M&A to come ... The company was NewRoo (a personalized news aggregation site). SiliconBeat has more.
As I was doing some research on attorney spending online I stumbled across this blog on legal advertising, which basically argues with some anecdotal evidence that the print directory is delivering less value to lawyer-advertisers today than it has in…
And away we go ... In the most recent installment of their ongoing small business research, Wells Fargo and Gallup found (no surprises here) that small businesses preferred free word-of-mouth referrals and rated them more effective than paid advertising. (This…
A couple of sites are reporting on the beta launch of Ingenio's Ether. It's essentially a billing and payments infrastructure with scheduling and phone number provisioning. It allows anyone who sells advice/expertise to do so remotely over the phone using…
I moderated two panels on local at SES this morning. Both were very interesting and took slightly different perspectives on Local Search. Both had tactical aspects and we were lucky to have an advertiser in the room that was part…
Search Engine Journal reports on a new product from Local.com that is basically a branded search engine that publishers can plant on their sites. This eliminates the need for publishers to invest in the development of search functionality on their…
Broadband numbers were up in 2005, according to Leichtman Research Group, and reported by Om Malik. We'll get into this further in an upcoming advisory on triple- and quad-play offerings of cable and telecom providers. We'll also hold a related…
PaidContent has an interesting interview with Jim Voelker, CEO of InfoSpace. It covers among other things the company's merging of its search and directory and mobile divisions. Read it here and listen to it here.
