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kelsey_icon_rgb.jpg Here is a recap of posts from last week, in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full.

Skype Redefines Itself: It’s All About Local

I’ve spent the past few months in talks with Skype about how the company would like to diversify its product model, and better position itself as a tool to generate leads for local businesses. Perhaps the timing couldn’t be better for a redefinition like this. Months of speculation over eBay’s divestiture of Skype culminated with this week’s announcement that it will spin off the company in an IPO next year. As an independent company, perhaps it will be better equipped to realize this vision. (read more…)

The Yellow Pages Delivery Guy

Recently the company that delivers Idearc Yellow Pages in the Princeton, NJ, area brought our office a few copies of the most recent edition. I imagine that most people do what I did when the book came, which was to check to make sure both my residential and business listings were in the directory. (read more…)

Apartments Increasingly Marketed on Web, Mobile

Apartments are in the vanguard among online marketplace verticals, as more apartment owners take advantage of Web and mobile features to target prospects — especially younger prospects. Indeed, apartment owners are increasingly leveraging video to show off floor plans and surrounding communities. They’re also using social media such as MySpace to differentiate their communities and give them a “vibe,” especially for higher-end properties. And they’re using mobile-enabled sites to catch prospects as they drive by. (read more…)

Jumptap Redefines Its Mobile Ad Network

Jumptap took an evolutionary step today with the launch of its tapMatch mobile ad targeting platform. The company has traditionally provided a range of mobile products, including a white-label search platform for publishers and carriers like AT&T and Virgin Mobile. TapMatch extends its capability as an ad network. (read more…)

Superpages Gives a Thumbs-Up to iPhone

Superpages today officially launched its iPhone application. This joins iPhone apps from all the major U.S. Yellow Pages publishers, as they each try to solidify brands and build traffic levels on the quickly growing mobile Web.  I’ve spent a lot of time talking to Peter Schwab, Idearc’s director of mobile products, about the company’s mobile philosophies, many of which are present in this application. One example is its thumbs-up feature, a circular wheel that lets users rotate a thumb to indicate the quality of the experience. (read more…)

Praized Brings the ‘Statusphere’ to Local Search

We’ve written recently how Twitter and other real-time feed based communication tools have potential integrations with local search. We’re also hearing a lot about how Twitter can be used for a new kind of search — used to comb through a real-time index of conversations happening now (the statusphere). (read more…)

How Many Devices Do We Need?

TechCrunch’s Sarah Lacy poses the specialist vs. generalist question, as it relates to mobile devices. It’s an issue we’ve raised here before: Despite improving smartphone market penetration and quality standards, are they hybrid plays that lose quality in the many functions they are trying to cram into one device? (read more…)

Mobile App Development: Where Is the Starting Point?

Over at Local Search News, my latest column posted. I also did a podcast with LSN’s Steve Espinosa over the weekend that should be available soon. The column has lots of data from our recent mobile ad revenue forecast, but the point is to also raise the question facing lots of companies entering the mobile space: Which platforms should I develop for? (read more…)

The NYT Covers Hyperlocal: It Isn’t Always About Journalism

The New York Times weighs in today on whether hyperlocal sites will fill the local coverage gap left by shrunken or collapsed newspapers — never mind that newspapers themselves have only recently rediscovered neighborhood-level news themselves. Almost of their attention has been on broader, metro-wide coverage. (read more…)

DMS ’09: A Five-Year Roadmap for Directional Media

We’ve just completed a preliminary agenda for our upcoming Directional Media Strategies ’09 conference, Sept. 22-24 in Orlando, Florida. DMS is our annual event focused on the global directories industry and, more broadly, connecting small-business advertisers with customers. It is the best single event of the year for understanding what will drive the directories business, and for networking with industry leaders who are serious about innovating and partnering. (read more…)

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