Hyperlocal sites are well intentioned, and most have some kind of a business plan. But they haven’t really focused much on making money. That’s where GrowthSpur, a new company, comes in.
Launched by former Washington Post executive and BackFence founder Mark Potts, GrowthSpur is a “soup to nuts” provider of training and services, targeting an [...]
Monthly Archives: July 2009
Potts Launches Effort to Make HyperLocal into a Real Business
July 31, 2009 – 4:32 pm
Diller: Vertical Search Represents Key Opportunity
July 30, 2009 – 6:52 pm
A year since IAC’s spinoff of several businesses, IAC Chairman Barry Diller, during a 2Q earnings call, saw some bright spots, including ServiceMagic, which saw a five percent jump in service requests. Diller also expressed optimism that the company had strong opportunities in several key areas, especially vertical search, and extensive downloads of [...]
The Huffington Post Slates Denver as Local Market #3
July 29, 2009 – 10:23 pm
The Huffington Post has hired a staffer for a Denver site, which will launch in September. Denver, the nation’s 20th largest market, will be HuffPo’s third local site. New York and Chicago are already up.
Los Angeles is slated to be #4, with more than a dozen sites planned in all. The sites are being [...]
ServiceMagic, Meredith Team on Targeting Women
July 28, 2009 – 5:59 pm
Women have become a prime target for service referrals. The appeal of Angie’s List’s premium gated community is largely oriented around them. Now ServiceMagic is ramping it up.
The IAC company, which recently launched an ambitious TV campaign, has announced a new partnership with Meredith Corp. that integrates a ServiceMagic widget (“find a pro”) with [...]
ServiceMagic TV Campaign Takes on YPs
July 27, 2009 – 8:42 pm
ServiceMagic, like Angie’s List, is spending big time to reach home owners with network TV ads. Two are currently in rotation; this one is a direct “PC vs. Mac” -like take on the Yellow Pages.
ServiceMagic is not the only local company on the airwaves. But it is the only one spending money. PennySaver [...]
Village Voice Media: Jumpstarting Online Efforts
July 27, 2009 – 8:32 pm
The conventional wisdom is that alternative weeklies have their best days behind them. But that’s clearly not the position of Village Voice Media, which owns 15 titles reaching about ¼ of the 7.6 million alt weekly readers in the U.S.
President and COO Scott Tobias notes that VVM has aggressively moved online in the last [...]
CBS Sports Taking Out Local Domains (Too)
July 24, 2009 – 8:39 pm
ESPN, which revealed a plan this week to launch a series of local sports websites, may soon be contending with local CBS Sports sites as well. As reported by the Fang’s Bites blog, , ESPN has registered at least 26 ESPN(Cityname).com sites, but CBS Sports is also in on the action, having registered at [...]
