comScore projected that U.S. e-commerce for the holiday season will hit $19.6 billion. The firm also projected a 24 percent increase in U.S. e-commerce vs. 2004 for a full year total of $82.7 billion. Those are big, impressive numbers and…
When I interviewed him on Friday, Jim Riesenbach, SVP of AOL's Search & Directional Media group, was not permitted to talk directly about what would be the outcome of the much covered negotiations for a stake in AOL. He turned…
I wish I could just list a bunch of company names and that could substitute for thoughtful blog posts about all the companies that I should be writing about and all the interesting and potentially significant things going on (both…
Thanks to John Battelle for pointing to a piece on SiliconValleyWatcher about Bubbler, an application that appears to make building sites (and blogs) pretty simple. The company and its platform are worth watching. Although Yahoo! has introduced free sites for…
Niki Scevak, who was a frequently quoted search analyst for Jupiter Research, hasn't been heard from recently. There's a reason: He's been busy launching his own online real estate site. Scevak left Jupiter and has now unveiled (in beta, of…
TrueLocal is starting to make its move. After many months of "beta"/under-the-radar status, the site is now getting attention and coverage. Today, Search Engine Watch has a nice write-up (plus one of mapping site Metrobot). Recently, TrueLocal acquired the data…
Here's an interesting article on Google's culture (NYTimes.com, reg. req'd). Corporate cultures are sometimes covered in feature articles that don't get as much attention as the news analysis pieces that throw around hard numbers. But culture may be a bigger…
While we were away at ILM:05, there was an interesting thread on John Battelle's blog regarding MySpace Classifieds. I don't have any insight into classifieds usage there, but casual observation indicates the postings are pretty thin (and one Battelle commenter…
I sincerely wish I had time to send every speaker and attendee at ILM:05 a personal thank you. I was very gratified by all the positive feedback we heard. It was a terrific (if exhausting) event and my hope is…
Here's another interesting real estate site/mashup, iGenHome -- sort of a marriage between HomePages.com and Trulia. SiliconBeat has a lot more info. Late last week, AOL brough it's mobile search out of beta. Supported by technology from Israeli company Infogin,…
As noted in Greg's post, last night, Verizon Corp. posted an announcement on its Web site that it is "reviewing strategic alternatives for the domestic operations of the company's wholly owned directories publishing business, Verizon Information Services." You can review…
An article in the WSJ today is reporting: "Verizon Communications Inc. said it plans to shed its phone-directories business, in a deal that could be valued at more than $17 billion ..." The obvious and stated motive is debt reduction.…
The Kelsey Group has been using AdWords to promote our Global Yellow Pages Report -- a massive piece of work on the industry from my colleagues Charles Laughlin and Bobbi Luster -- and our ad uses the phrase "Yellow Pages."…
There are a bunch of people out there who believe The Kelsey Group overhypes local. And that's certainly the lens through which we view the world. But if you pay attention, we clearly have a balanced view of the local…
For anyone who can't keep up with the dizzying torrent of service announcements from Google (or anyone wondering what $400+ a share gets you), CNET News provides a nice chart that summarizes its many products and (public) initiatives under way.Meanwhile,…
Now Intuit has gotten into the local search game, creating an InsiderPages/Judy's Book-like directory site. The site Zipingo has been live since August, but generally under the radar. Intuit is trying to leverage its huge QuickBooks' SME user base to…
Shawn Riegsecker, Centro CEO, took me aside today at our conference and helped clarify for me that Centro is not a network but rather a buying service for national advertisers that want to make local/geotargeted online ad buys. Centro will…
An interesting story just appeared on Bloomberg that reports Australian publisher Sensis, a unit of telecom Telstra, will be spared from a massive job-cutting program because it represents a critical component of Telstra's growth plans. Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo has…
Dex Media issued a press release today announcing it has achieved a comfortable lead as the most-used IYP/local search site within Dex's 14-state home region, with a 32 percent share of directional media searches for the period, according to comScore.…
My colleague Michael Boland blogged about Integrent's new geo-targeted network Centro, below. When I spoke, now some time ago, to Integrent CEO Shawn Riegsecker (who's on a newspaper panel at ILM:05) he told me he wanted to build a newspaper-based…
