Events and “recreational discovery” are being transformed by social media, as evidenced by the development of Eventbrite, a new ticketing platform, and Goby, which helps consumers find things to do, including travel. Eventbrite CEO Kevin Hartz noted that his company,…
A panel of cable, television and rich media ad companies converged today at ILM East to remind us that the PC (and mobile) isn't the only screen where content delivery innovation is happening. Dan Hassan, Chairman and CEO, BCM Greg…
Today at ILM East, Gail Goodman CEO of Constant Contact kicked off Day 2 with a provocative and as she said "controversial" call for local players to collaborate in helping SMBs fully participate in local social marketing by finding an…
A panel of Google Local execs spoke at ILM East today about the importance of building social and personalized content on top of the basic business listings details that constitute Places (and so many other online local products). Lior Ron,…
A powerful panel of local media players talked this morning about the challenges of doing hyperlocal effectively and profitably on “The New Wave of ‘Hyper-Relevant’ Media.” Hyperlocal has long been a vexing challenge, for publishers, from a content creation standpoint as well as making money.
One panelist compared it to mobile, an opportunity filled with anticipation and promise, but that always seemed to be a year away. Finally, mobile is living up to its promise. So when will hyperlocal follow suit?
Here are some panel highlights:
David Haupt, Director, Local Revenue, Examiner.com
Haupt describes Examiner.com as the biggest network of citizen journalists. The business started with a national focus, moving increasingly to local, both in terms of content and revenues. The site began with celebrity and nationally focused examiners and has moved down the line to “backyard poultry examiners.”
Liveblogging the social events panel at ILM East. Kevin Hartz, the CEO and founder of Eventbrite, is speaking on how the ticket-selling service is riding social media to about $500,000,000 in ticket sales this year. Hartz starts with a slide…
If you're a publisher, Yext CEO Howard Lerman wants to share his plumbing with you. Not literally, but in the "presence product" marketplace, where Yext will soon open up its Tags platform to enable participating publishers to create their own…
Facebook is less about business development or forming partnerships than establishing itself as an identity platform, notes Maz Shirafi, Sr. Manager of Monetization, who was speaking at BIA/Kelsey’s ILM East conference this week in Boston. Sharafi also noted that Facebook’s…
Chuck Lee, AT&T's executive director of Internet Ad Solutions, has a casual yet matter-of-fact way of delivering messages that stick. Based on results from the recent Vertical Shopper Study that AT&T commissioned, his message to the ILM East audience was clear:…
As is usual when we have SMBs on stage, our SMB advertiser panel was one of the highlights of the first day of ILM East. The local Boston area businesses provided attendees with the down-low on what’s working and what’s…
With several recent tech valuations raising eyebrows -- Quora at $86 million, Twitter at nearly $8 billion to name just two -- a word that's been tossed around Silicon Valley a lot these days is "froth." Sean Moriarty, entrepreneur…
This afternoon at ILM East, At&t's Maria Kermath outlined the do's and don't's of approaching and navigating the sales cycle of AT&T Interactive. As bus dev lead for AT&T's "product factory" she straddles partner vetting and product development. This is…
Foursquare is out with a new tool for businesses that should make it easier to sign up and use the service, which already serves 250,000 businesses, according to GM Evan Cohen, who was speaking at ILM East. Foursquare has also…
David Weinberger, author and senior researcher, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, kicked off ILM East 2011 with an opening keynote focusing on use of social media by local businesses to pursue conversations, engagement and customer acquisition. Weinberger…
This afternoon at BIA/Kelsey's ILM East, Boston Globe publisher Chris Mayer got things going with remarks that shed light on how a traditional media company is transforming itself to a new digital era business model. His challenge is not finding…
In the diverse yet confusing local advertising ecosystem, the new mandate calls for media companies to engage local business clients with holistic solutions that engage their customers in new ways. Deals and mobile optimization have received the lion’s share of…
Last week we mentioned that DoubleDutch built us a custom check-in app for ILM East. After a weekend building badges in photoshop, I'm happy to say that the app is conference ready. All the awards, badges and offers are outlined…
Mobile is playing an increasingly large role for deal a day, with some companies seeing it accounting for 20 percent to 25 percent of their traffic. But making transactions from mobile devices remains a work in progress. There is apparently…
LivingSocial stepped up to the plate Thursday with the ultimate daily deal. On the blog this week, Peter tells us that for every $5 donated for Japan Relief to the U.S. Red Cross, LivingSocial will match it.
Social dominated much of the news this week. I looked at how Google slowly continues to reveal its social search strategy, while Jed summarized Google’s Marissa Mayer’s keynote at South By Southwest (SXSE), the focus on Hotpot.
Jed wrapped up our continuous coverage of SXSW from the check-ins to the daily deals and how Twitter continues to save broadcast TV. (What a week.) Wait, there’s more. Mike told us about the mobile and social scene at ILM East, and Peter dealt us the details on Yellowbook’s Pat Marshall.
Here’s what we uncovered this week out there in the socialsphere:
Nobody Ever Gets Fired for Hiring Gilbert Gottfried
What happens when word come across on Twitter or Facebook as “tasteless, inappropriate and insensitive”? Aflac and Chrysler Group struggled to answer that question this week, according to Stuart Elliott. He tells us one expert calls it the “amplified effect” of social media and provides insight on what to do if it happens to you.
Eventbrite Director of Marketing Tamara Mendelsohn told us at SxSW Interactive that because "events are inherently social," the online events organizer and ticketing exchange in uniquely positioned to leverage social media to allow literally anyone to post and share events. But Mendelsohn's…
