TKG's Directional Media Strategies conference kicked off this morning, and we'll blog most sessions here. There was an interesting session run by Michael Taylor throughout the morning to kick off our local sales training series. Direct local sales is a…
The TechCrunch50 show wrapped up today and winners were announced. The grand prize ($50,000) went to Yammer, which is an enterprise version of Twitter that lets companies start internal communication networks. I missed the presentation on Monday but TechCrunch's Erick…
After the second day (my first) of the action-packed TechCrunch50 show, here are a few of the newly launched companies I got to talk to, and the reasons I liked them. To stay true to the show's title, I'll keep…
Today and tomorrow, I'm at the TechCrunch50 show in San Francisco. The show is basically Michael Arrington's answer to the DEMO conference series in which companies get five minutes on stage to show off newly launched online products. The difference…
We've long known Google to be on a path toward facilitating media buys across a cluster of offline traditional media. A clearer glimpse into this vision was given yesterday by Meredith Papp, product marketing manager at Google, during TKG's session…
Today at SES Steve Espinosa, director of product development for eLocal Listing, stressed the importance of video to gain better search rankings and conversions in local search results. Specifically, SMB videos on eLocal Listing have seen a 3.34 X increase…
At a pair of TKG-run sessions at SES San Jose, the value of good local data was a pervasive theme. This relates to the ongoing online-offline challenge in local media and search. The problem basically comes down to the inability…
Sebastien Provencher points to the small but hopeful collection of local sessions that have been proposed for the 2009 South By Southwest conference taking place in March. One is led by Topix.com CEO Chris Tolles ("Think Globally, Post Locally: The…
Michael Rogers, The New York Times Co.’s futurist-in-residence, told Inman Real Estate Connect attendees last week that over the next few years, “mobile [will be] the most important piece of the interactive space.” Largely driving the adaption of mobile will…
New media pioneer Deanna Brown, who is running Scripps Networks Digital after stints at CondeNet, AOL and Yahoo, told Inman Real Estate Connect attendees last week that their responsibility is to make sure real estate brokers are “on mobile, the…
One of the most challenging aspects of speaking to the geodomain industry was the diverse backgrounds of the people in the industry. They come from media companies, technology firms, the music industry and the real estate business. What they have in…
Social media may not be worth much as an advertising medium right now, but it has become a critical part of real estate marketing, according to speakers at the Inman Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco. “It is not…
Craigslist is arguably the No. 1 real estate site with real estate-oriented page views in the “low billions per month." So it makes sense to have founder Craig Newmark address the first day of the Inman Real Estate Connect conference…
The headlines from this week’s edition: GE: The Heat on Immelt Google: Weathering the Storm? The Future of Fannie and Freddie Anheuser-Busch’s Troubled Brew This wedding tradition of something old and something new is appropriate for BusinessWeek’s leading online stories…
It is an awkward time for a company to be holding an affiliate meeting right after it has been sold. This week, ShopLocal was put in this position for its long planned meeting with 120 retail partners in Chicago (where…
At Princeton's Fourth of July fireworks last night, I got into a discussion with a friend who is concerned about his son who works as a journalist for a small N.J. newspaper. I referred him to a "tell it like it is"…
Inhabiting a small but potentially valuable corner of the local search world are geodomains -- sites like Boston.com whose intuitive URLs give them a leg up in direct navigation traffic and branding. Boston.com might be a bad example because it…
Today The Kelsey Group unveiled a new name and brand for our September conference. What used to be known as Directory Driven Commerce is now Directional Media Strategies. In most respects, nothing has changed. The conference is still Sept. 15-17…
Shopper publications attending the International Classified Media Association meeting in Brussels this week -- the vast majority from outside the U.S. -- are showing resilience against the challenges of the Internet, and looking at new models to sustain their existing…
Internet legend Marc Andreessen waxed positive about social networking and VC opportunities for the next five years during a packed luncheon at the Think Tomorrow -- Today conference. Without spending too much time talking about his own social networking venture, Ning,…