SmallTown, the Bay Area hyperlocal company, is changing its core focus and will concentrate mostly on getting wider distribution of its WebCards microsites for small businesses. While the nine-person company will continue to maintain its hyperlocal sites, which are now…
These are tough, fast-changing times for newspapers, and many of them are taking severe measures to get back on track. Sometimes, it means putting the innovative online guy in charge of print too, as Bay Area News Group has done…
Despite some traction by sites like Yelp -- OK, specifically Yelp -- the hybrid IYP/rating-and-review segment remains something of a question mark in the industry. It remains to be seen whether such sites can attract a large number of frequent…
AOL may have trouble on several fronts, but it still gets millions of users and it intends to fully leverage them at the local level, per Chris Spanos, Director of Search Verticals, who was speaking at Kelsey Seattle. “Given its…
In light of BostonNow’s closure this week (apparently for investment-related reasons), I’ve been mulling over the future of free metro papers in the U.S. The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and The San Diego Union-Tribune are among newspaper companies that…
There are a number of new or re-energized hyperlocal efforts out there, trying to crack the code. New efforts are expected shortly from Outside.in and SmallTown. Ongoing efforts are being made with AmericanTowns, which counts Idearc as a lead investor,…
Last week, we wrote about The Seattle Times Co. and its new “Network search,” which is powered with FAST. This week, we are covering The Boston Globe’s Boston.com and its new “Federated” search solution, powered by Google. Federated and Network…
Yelp! has announced that it got $15 million in a fourth round of funding led by DAG and existing investors. The company also sent some growth metrics: October '07 -- 5M Unique Visitors December '07 -- 6M UVs January '08…
When a local team headed by ad agency and PR veteran Brian Tierney bought The Philadelphia Inquirer and related holdings 18 months ago, it was seen as a possible model for how “new thinking” could transform the newspaper industry. Since then,…
A couple of weeks ago, Citysearch formed a distribution deal with AOL that pushed its content and ads throughout the AOL Local Network. As we wrote here, this had a close resemblance to the December deal the company formed with…
Local.com, which has previously relied on third-party sales, is going direct in a big way. The company has outsourced contracts for 50 salespeople, up from 10. “We plan to ramp sales staff to several hundred this year,” says CEO Heath…
I liked the 2003-2007 concept of a “local info hub.” The idea was to think beyond the original business boundaries of newspapers (and Yellow Pages). Now that concept has been fancifully enlarged to a “local info and connection utility." The…
A new study in the United Kingdom, commissioned by welovelocal.com, a U.K.-based online local site competing against directory publishers, has found that 35 percent of British consumers no longer want to receive print directories, and choose the Internet to look…
The Los Angeles Times and the rest of the Tribune Co. have been going through a very public belt tightening. The most recent round of cutbacks apparently played a role in the departure of Editor James O’Shea. But when it…
Kudzu, the service-oriented rating and review directory from Cox Search, has been under the radar for a while, while similar services (i.e., Judy’s Book, Insider Pages and Backfence) have run into some turbulence. But a recent visit with GM Tom…
As promised, today I had the chance to talk with Local.com's VP of bus dev and sales, Peter Hutto, who took time away from his vacation to provide some more color on yesterday's partnership with Citysearch. Hutto confirmed that the…
Local.com announced today that it will pull in and display content from Citysearch in its local listings. This will enhance Local.com's own content and bring in more ad revenues from Citysearch advertisers. Citysearch will meanwhile get more distribution for its…
BooRah, the Bay Area restaurant review site, has raised some seed funding from Storm Ventures and other investors (amount undisclosed) and plans to use the money to grow beyond its roots as a tech vendor for alternative newsweeklies. The…
It is hard for me to comprehend, but we are finally finished with ILM:07. We were grateful to have had 650 interesting and enthusiastic attendees from all over the world, 72 stimulating speakers, a full load of sponsors and an…
Jonathan Weber started his career in traditional media as a writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times, but the new media bug got hold of him. He was the cofounder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard, which…
