ILM East is shaping up as a major landmark conference. Since our last update, we have many new “adds” to the agenda, and it looks like we’re going to have a really big and prestigious event. Even before it begins,…
It’s safe to say that Ted Leonsis is at the center of the local revolution. He’s done it all, from his early days trying to jump-start e-commerce at Redgate, to his work building a local framework at AOL (i.e., MapQuest,…
Movl, a TV app maker, received $500,000 from billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban, to help fund business development as the company launches three new features. Movl designs multiscreen, multidevice apps to enhance the connected-TV viewing experience. Now Movl is…
The agenda is shaping up well for the Local Search Association's April conference, the first involving a partnership with BIA/Kelsey. The event runs April 21-24 at the Boca Resort in Boca Raton, FL. We've lined up headline presentation from Ursula…
Following in the footsteps of major brands such as Apple, Nike, Harley Davidson and ESPN, LivingSocial is now seeking to enhance its core brand via a retail “experience" center where book clubs, cooking classes, painting classes and performances can all…
On Thursday's Q4 and full-year 2011 earnings call, Eniro announced that it will phase out its print Gula Sider (Yellow Pages) directory in Norway, leaving only local directories as a print product choice in the Nordic country with a population…
The deals culture is shifting from customer acquisition to customer loyalty by necessity. Why? Deals have begun losing high-income women. That’s the view of Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim, a featured speaker at ILM East in Boston March 26-28. “Daily…
We've long looked at the online-offline gap. This comes down to the challenge in connecting the dots between increasing levels of online research and the sheer volume of offline spending (95 percent of U.S. retail). This is ROBO: research online…
As SMBs learn the power of online video to reach their customers, video can also be powerful upstream in their value chain. That's the idea behind a few video contests sprouting up this month from big corporations to give SMBs…
We’re seeing more vertical players trying to leverage their brands with deal offerings and advertising. The latest one is Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Twenty-two Blue Cross state organizations around the U.S. are working with Analog Analytics to launch Blue365,…
We have been meeting with a number of media salespeople, tracking articles about the transformation of the sales process, developing a number of theories specific to transforming the media sales process plus what is needed to support the transformation. We…
Amazon.com, which is moving in multiple directions vis-à-vis local, has agreed to buy TeachStreet, the service for matching teachers and students. Amazon’s interest appears to be less in TeachStreet than in the underlying e-commerce platform for SMBs. The platform already…
In an effort to get "back in the game" for briefings with interesting mobile start-ups, this week I had the chance to catch up with Trover cofounder and CEO Jason Karas about some new features. If you haven't heard of…
By now, much of the connected universe, and certainly all of technolphilia, is aware of Facebook's IPO, which seeks to raise up to $5 billion (and perhaps eventually $10 billion) when its shares go public this spring. The net effect…
As part of the information overload that is Facebook's long awaited S-1 filing, the company announced it is up to 845 million active global users (defined as monthly users). That's a 39 percent year-over-year jump. That total has slowly been…
Yellow Media is cutting jobs in its Canpages print directories division but says it will keep its Canpages online business. "From an online and mobile perspective, the Canpages brand will continue to exist," said Yellow Pages Group Treasurer Anne-Sophie Roy.…
In the immediate wake of our report on Google mobile ad revenues, TechCrunch reports today that the search giant saw a 2x year-over-year increase in mobile search ad requests (the largest source of its mobile ad revenues) in 2011. Our…
LivingSocial, in a battle with Groupon and other deal providers to gain (and keep) market share, lost an eye popping $558 million beyond its $245 million in net earnings, according to a regulatory filing by Amazon.com, which owns 31 percent…
Local isn’t easy, or even worthwhile. Chris Devore, Seattle-based co-ounder of Judy’s Book, wants to remind entrepreneurs to stay away. In a new blog post, Devore gives three top reasons NOT to do a local + online start-up: 1- There’s…
Business-to-business companies are catering to a growing crop of decision-makers who are turning to the Internet for purchase information according to data from Marin Software. The average cost per click in the B2B paid search space increased 29 percent from…
