Month: February 2006

MySpace, the supersite for teens, has announced the launch of its own branded "mobile virtual network operator" network. The service and phones will be powered/provided by Helio LLC, which is a joint venture of Earthlink Inc. and South Korean carrier SK Telecom Co. The service will reportedly use the networks of Sprint and Verizon. No…

I’m restraining myself from using the term "Web2.0," which really is on the cusp of cliche status. But Judy’s Book has done some very interesting things to its site that if I were comfortable using that term … might describe some of what they’ve done. First, they’ve redesigned the site in a much more graphically…

Here’s an interesting post I came across from the Internet Stock Blog (quoting the earnings call) on how local advertising is driving revenue growth at online wedding vertical/portal and directory site TheKnot.com: Online ad sales constituted 57% of the company's revenue for the quarter, and just over 50% of the year's revenues (other revenue streams:…

In an admittedly self-serving e-mail, InsiderPages VP Andrew Shotland pointed me to Alexa traffic data that show basically that YellowBook.com and the newer online-only site are neck and neck. YellowBook has been running a TV campaign during the Olympics, whereas InsiderPages relies on SEO/SEM, syndication and word of mouth. If the Alexa data are to…

Chris Sherman has a very balanced write-up of Google’s enhanced destop search and its privacy implications. My personal view is that Google has become highly sensitized to its perceived position in the market and the privacy issues swirling around the company. I’ve had several conversations about this with Google folks. Anyway, privacy is a serious…

We put out a press release this morning highlighting some top-level numbers from our forecast released to clients late last week. Here are some of the numbers featured in the release: Global print Yellow Pages revenues will increase 1.5 percent from $26.3 billion in 2005 to $28.4 billion in 2010. Global local search revenues (Internet…

Search and Win: A story that’s circulating today is one about the prospect of MSN and Yahoo! "incentivizing" users to switch to their search engines with rewards and prizes. MSN is further along; Yahoo! floated what might be called a "trial balloon" on the subject. Nielsen’s Ken Cassar thinks the general idea is "smart promotion."…

The video and IPTV news inundation continues. Here is this week’s roundup; –"Punk’d" and "Beauty and the Geek" creators Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg will team up with AOL to deliver five new programs exclusively on AOL.com. — ZDNet has an interesting piece on what John Nicol will do for MSN’s video and multimedia efforts.…

If anyone is interested to see how last night’s TiVo event went that we blogged about on Friday, here is coverage from Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection.

Seth Godin (found via SEW) reports on a Google click-to-call option that is being served up with some sponsored links. He gives an example of sponsored search results that instead of links, include a small phone icon (same icon used to place calls in Google Talk) which can be clicked to open a small Ajax-based…

A little while ago I got a peek at the successor to Microsoft’s classifieds marketplace "Fremont." The new site is being called "Expo" and offers a number of advancements and enhancements over the original incarnation of MSN classifieds. It was described as a "locally relevant social marketplace." My understanding is that site won’t go live…

News from the IPTV world continues to come at us with no signs of slowing, as the industry’s many moving parts take form. There are content issues with rights and aggregation; technical issues with bandwidth and video delivery; and local and national ad delivery and the valuable targeting that IP technologies enable. These issues will…

From the bizzare item of the day dept., TiVo is setting up a promotional event on Monday (close enough to Valentines day), that mixes speed dating and well, TiVo. The event will match San Francisco singles with "their perfect TV compatable Valentine". Basically this means that they’ll wear name tags that list favorite shows, and…

It appears that something of a milestone has been reached (if the data are to be believed). According to this survey written up in MediaPost (reg. req’d), the Internet has become the primary hiring vehicle for employers. The research was sponsored by the DirectEmployers Association, "a non-profit consortium of over 200 U.S. employers and operator…

The WSJ (sub. req’d) and MediaPost (reg. req’d) today both have articles about the new, public auction of ad placements in major magazines on Google. We first blogged about it (after a tip from Battelle’s blog) here on Wednesday. From the WSJ article: Google has been placing ads on behalf of its advertisers in three…

I met with Steven Marder this morning, CEO of Eurekster. These guys were way ahead of the "social search" curve but confused users and the marketplace with their early positioning. People saw them as a complicated Google/Yahoo! competitor. They’re really an enterprise search B2B play that offers site search and more contextually relevant Web search.…

John Battelle reported today that Yahoo! has upgraded MyWeb 2.0. Users can now search "everybody’s tabs," which basically expands the social search aspect of the service. MyWeb along with Yahoo!-owned del.icio.us could be central elements to Yahoo!’s overall "folksonomy" strategy that relies on the power of people to tag content (rather than the more Google-esque…