Grayboxx ranks local businesses based on the number of mentions it receives on online consumer services. Almost a year after I first wrote about it, it has finally launched. The service, which assumes that people mostly mention services they like, has repositioned itself as the ratings service for small towns that couldn’t hope to get […]
Monthly Archives: August 2007
Restaurant.com Drives New Eat-in Diners
August 31, 2007 – 2:31 am
Using the Web to drive customers to restaurants via online ads, 2-fo-1 coupons, certificates, menus and/or reservations is a big idea that hasn’t totally arrived, but is getting closer. There has definitely been some progress in the space. For instance, OpenTable, the high end reservations manager, appears to have finally secured its niche.
Restaurant.com hopes that […]
Yelp Integrates Event Listings in 10 Cities
August 24, 2007 – 11:01 pm
Yelp has added events to its listings, maps and user reviews in 10 cities — San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, San Jose, Austin, Chicago, Washington D.C., and San Diego. The feature includes a landing page for each event, a comment board and a “will you be attending” feature. Unlike Yahoo!’s upcoming.org, […]
Jingle Expands Free DA Deal with Nuance
August 23, 2007 – 7:07 pm
Jingle Networks, the provider of 1(800)Free411, has expanded its relationship with Nuance for speech recognition technology. Under terms of the deal, Nuance will also be referring its voice-enabled customers to the Jingle ad platform. Presumably, if Nuance does audio work for McDonalds, for instance, it could easily be uploaded into the Jingle platform.
The Nuance […]
Admission Seeks Middle Ground between Search and Display
August 23, 2007 – 4:50 pm
The big picture that we’ve all been looking at is that online ad spending for search and lead generation is beginning to plateau. ComScore pegs search’s share at around 40 percent.
Google certainly sees it; hence its recent effort to entrench itself into display and video. So does Admission Corp. A couple of years ago, the […]
Gannett Says ‘No’ to Planet Discover’s Outside Work
August 22, 2007 – 9:58 pm
Planet Discover, the pioneering local search and Internet Yellow Pages vendor, won’t sign new contracts with local media outlets that compete with Gannett newspaper and TV properties, according to sources. Gannett purchased Planet Discover in May 2006, but up to now, has not interfered with its business development. Gannett’s decision leaves the local search […]
GetVendors.com Takes on ServiceMagic, Etc.
August 16, 2007 – 11:56 pm
Service referral sites like ServiceMagic and Angie’s List have gotten some traction. But by no means are they dominating the business. What will it take?
Ashish Mohole, co-founder of startup GetVendors.com, thinks the key is to guarantee that users get a wide assortment of choices when they make a query. Too many queries come up empty, […]