Events are a vertical that cuts across many segments: travel, retail, sports, entertainment, education, dining, culture and others. Major players include specialists such as Zvents, Eventful, Americantowns.com and Center’d. City sites such as Citysearch and Yelp are active in the…
If you've been reading TechCrunch this week, you'll know (or be annoyed by repeated claims) that this year's SXSW conference will be all about location-based mobile apps. They've dubbed it the "location wars." Everyone is doing and thinking about location…
I finally got around to viewing Yellowbook CEO Joe Walsh's recent appearance on FoxBusinessNetwork. The line of questioning presumed the obsolescence of print, which Walsh certainly anticipated. He made a few assertions that one might expect -- that people still…
It's nearing the end of earnings season for the global Yellow Pages industry, and my program, The Kelsey Report, will soon issue a detailed roundup of 2009 results across all the companies that report publicly. In general, the news has…
The pace of innovation in mobile is swift. We have new supposed iPhone Killers every week, and mobile app stores are bursting with new and upgraded apps. In the mobile local world, aside from the flood of social LBS apps…
The “Flash e-commerce” space got hotter today, as Washington, D.C.-based LivingSocial announced a new $30 million round led by U.S. Venture Partners. Grotech Ventures and Revolution (Steve Case’s company) are also participating. The funding will be used to launch deal-a-day…
In its evolving product search efforts, Google has been dabbling in "find it in store" functionality over the years. This is a challenging area involving lots of moving parts and point of sale inventory data from retailers. Krillion, NearbyNow, Milo…
In its evolving product search efforts, Google has been dabbling in "find it in store" functionality over the years. This is a challenging area involving lots of moving parts and point of sale inventory data from retailers. Krillion, NearbyNow, Milo…
MerchantCircle’s Merchant Index tracks merchant confidence in the economy (low). But it also yields some unexpected “real world” insight into merchant awareness and use of their local online marketing options. The Index is based on 11,000+ e-mail respondents, so there…
Local news cooperatives are now in development in San Diego, Chicago, Hawaii and San Francisco. The latter, known as The Bay Area News Project, is building up with a $5 million investment from philanthropist Warren Hellman, who apparently thought it…
Redbeacon, one of the new breed of social/local leads providers for SMBs, said it is now available throughout the entire Bay Area and teaming up with BigTent, a mega-moms network in the Bay Area with more than 100 local cells.…
Following the previous post about Facebook's potential to be a category killer in the quickly budding mobile LBS market, could Google do the same? Like Facebook, the question comes down to Google's sheer scale and installed base. It hasn't done…
Following the previous post about Facebook's potential to be a category killer in the quickly budding mobile LBS market, could Google do the same? Like Facebook, the question comes down to Google's sheer scale and installed base. It hasn't done…
This week so far has seen a few notable news bits from the quickly evolving world of mobile ad networks. ULocate announced that it will extend its location targeted ad network to a small batch of third-party publishers. Known as…
Location-based services continue to roll out left and right. TechCrunch won't stop saying this year's South By Southwest conference will be all about location (except for this contrarian piece by Paul Carr). We mostly agree. But with all the start-ups…
Coupons are hot in a down economy, and printable online coupons -- and even mobile coupons -- are gaining share in the coupon business. But local SMBs aren’t always in on the game, as coupon sites frequently gravitate toward one-stop…
Local radio and television stations are in various stages of extending the broadcasting business model from traditional over-the-air to an array of digital platforms. This allows both new inventory with different attributes to be sold and a critical revenue growth…
I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Pastko, CEO of Coupious a Boulder, Colorado-based mobile coupon platform. Coupious got its start when Pastko and his partner leveraged their experience at Purdue University to launch a Coupious iPhone application in…
Citysearch announced today that it has shifted its ad model for small businesses, moving from the cost-per-click model that it pioneered several years ago to a new model that will drive consumers directly to their own Web sites. The new…
Vermont’s Front Porch Forum is a hyperlocal network that has thrived, usage-wise, without relying on much of anything other than its authentic community voice. As recounted in an article in this month’s Yankee magazine by enviro-writer Bill McKibben, the hyperlocal…