Google is out with a new more widely accessible version of its link shortening tool at goo.gl. Like longstanding competitors bit.ly and Tiny URL, it will shorten any link to be used in various social networking and communications scenarios. It claims to…
PhoneTell cofounder Steve Larsen just took the stage at Mobilize to announce the coming of its iPhone and BlackBerry apps, and next week's opening of a series A funding round. BlackBerry will be out in the next few weeks and…
I'm at GigaOm's Mobilize ’10 conference today, where Skyhook Wireless CEO Ted Morgan joined a procession of morning presentations to espouse the collision of mobile, social and local. Geolocation is clearly a hot area but not a new topic --…
Surojit Chatterjee announced today on Google's Mobile Ads Blog that the company has launched a new format for hyperlocal mobile ads. After searching for a business, ads will now tell you how far the closest location is, indicated by both…
We’re excited to announce our initial round of speakers for Interactive Local Media 2010, which takes place Dec. 7-9 in Santa Clara, California -- the heart of Silicon Valley. For sure, the industry has seen some dynamic shifts this year…
In the local media forecast we just released, U.S. mobile local ad revenues are projected to grow from $213 million in 2009 to $2.02 billion in 2014, a compound annual growth rate of 57 percent. This is the location targeted…
Mobile payments have been a sticky area of development with lots of hurdles and moving parts. But once developed and adopted in earnest, the field has the potential to unlock all kinds of mobile commerce capabilities both online (e-commerce) and…
The deal-a-day marketplace is shaping up as a couple of leading brands in each market, some local media using white-label solutions and a healthy dose of aggregators repeating most or all the deals. Seeing to cut across much of the…
Sorting content by neighborhoods and ZIP codes can boost usage considerably, as HelloMetro recently discovered. The 10-year-old city guide gets more than 6 million monthly unique visitors and has 1,500 local sites. In a case study published today, it said…
The concept of a local affinity club for like-minded members looking for deals is always out there, although it's never really been mastered. Now, in the wake of Groupon’s success, the club concept looks like a vertical take on group-buying…
The market for SMB Web site building basically divides into do-it-yourself with a vendor that you select, or Web sites that are bundled with other marketing services. Pushing on the latter is Websplanet, a fast-growing 50-person company that is specifically…
The Las Vegas Sun is focusing on hyperlocal “Home News” neighborhood information that positions it for Yellow Pages-like sales, according to Sun President Brian Greenspun, who was speaking at a recent conference at the University of Las Vegas Nevada. Greenspun,…
In case you missed them, here are a few headlines and links to recent posts on our Mobile Local Media blog. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed here, and the e-mail alert here. -- Evolving the Check-in: Deeper Integration With the…
We keep saying that media darlings like Foursquare and Gowalla will have to evolve beyond the game mechanics and check-ins that have driven their usage. Simply put, these drivers will lose novelty. Among other things, they'll need to develop an…
The small-business market is always attractive to vendors in terms of volume, but many give up in frustration because of its fragmentation, low margins and high-service needs (and churn). Many of these vendors typically seek to move up the value…
Mozilla Labs is out with a "concept phone." Like its cousin, the concept car, the phone doesn't exists but it's a futuristic glimpse of what we could see soon. This comes on the heels of lots of sector overlapping within the…
Android App SwiftKey publicly launched today to compete with Swype and other assisted typing tools by essentially creating predictive text on crack. It has done this by creating a machine learning engine that goes much further than the (highly annoying…
The Canadian publisher DirectWest has teamed up with VendAsta to enter the hot group buying space.The new service will be called Mysaskdeals, and it is reportedly the first of its kind in Saskatchewan. “We are very excited about this new…
As reported over the past 24 hours, mobile local ad network WHERE has announced reaching 1 billion impressions. In the same press release, it announced that 11 percent of clicks on its network result in calls or directions to local…
Scheduling is seen as the next wave of online marketplace services for SMBs, encouraging sticky usage, premium features and, in some cases, highly contextual advertising. Scheduling vendors such as Agendize, Full Slate, MaxiPage and X Time are actively syndicating solutions.…