AT&Ti’s Buzz.com Now in Beta

March 5, 2010


AT&T Interactive has put up a beta version of its new Buzz.com site dedicated to eliciting positive social recommendations and answers to questions from friends, friends of friends and throughout the Buzz site ( which unfortunately, may get confused with Google Buzz, which was developed after AT&T had announced plans for Buzz.com.)

The site’s main purpose is to zero in on nontraditional categories that aren’t really met by Yellow Pages (such as “romantic hotels”). While no advertising is currently being sold, it will be sold in the future. There is currently no plan to integrate with the reviews that users provide Yellowpages.com, or its new prototype, YP.com – buzz.com users will have a different intent in mind.

The beta hooks in with Facebook Connect, and will roll out over several weeks after initially being limited to invites only. Project leader Charlie Hornberger notes that Buzz will eventually also be enabled for Twitter, instant messaging platforms, Q&A sites (such as Answers.com), and other social networks as well. “Social search is the future, but not in 2010” he says. As with AlikeList, which we also wrote about this week, the positive nature of a recommendations-only site represents “extremely qualified leads.”

Hornberger notes that the user interface remains a work in progress for the project team, which has less than two dozen people. Initially, for instance, the site was going to limit its big red heart for favorites to a single choice. It quickly found out that people want to have multiple favorites. The site also currently has a list of favorites for each user. But in the future, that list might take more creative forms, such as tag clouds.

The site will also eventually feature “best recommenders.” Future versions may also have some aspects in sentimental analysis and reputation and presence management. AT&T is investing in these areas. But Buzz.com is actually a fairly simple idea. It just needs strong execution. “You don’t need a PhD” for it, says Hornberger. Current plans are to market it virally, with some advertising on social media likely as well.

AT&Ti Executive Director Greg Isaacs is a featured speaker on the New Directories Panel at Marketplaces 2010, along with execs from Local Matters, SuperMedia and MerchantCircle.

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InfoGroup on Merchant Supplied Data: Useful, but No Substitute

March 4, 2010


Merchant data sent in by fans of merchants and from merchants themselves is becoming increasingly important. Can it be relied on as a main source, or should it only complement listings data from the big three providers –InfoGroup, Acxiom and Localeze?

We talked to InfoGroup VP of Business Development Pankaj Mathur about it. Not surprisingly, he has mixed feelings. It is certainly useful and cost effective, and from an SEM perspective, there is sometimes the feeling that “more (data elements) is better,” he says.

But he warns that accuracy and reliability are more important than ever before, especially with mobile phones that can send people to bad locations. Also looming is the sense that merchants are incentivized to misrepresent themselves so that they can boost their search rankings or be found under lucrative-but- wrong categories (i.e. cab companies under “airports”).

InfoGroup (and probably the other leaders in the space) instead take the “trust but verify” approach to merchant data. The company receives 10-15k submissions per month from multiple partners such as OnStar, Yahoo! and AOL. “We find that about 50 percent of these submissions are false positive like duplicates or incorrect information, “says Mathur.

In a newly issued article, Mathur goes into more detail about the importance of the duplicates issue. In franchise corporations, for instance, there may be lists of storefronts within marketing departments, operations departments and accounting deparrtments. They don’t always overlap with LBS (location based services) requests, he notes.

Moreover, retailers often neglect to delete or change storefront information – something that creates a special mess when companies such as Starbucks close hundreds of units throughout the country. Mathur suggests one step updaters (such as his company’s “Express Update”) are a partial answer, In the meantime, the validated information from the leading listings providers remains in the driver’s seat.

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Tribune Invests in Perfect Market, a Long Tail Content Site

March 4, 2010


Demand Media, Associated Content and Examiner.com are each building up an arsenal of highly searchable “long tail” content. Now add Perfect Market to their ranks; a new company that seeks to provide the same “long tail” search optimized earnings capabilities to archival content from newspapers and other media.

The site just added a $6 million round lead by The Tribune Co. That adds to $15.6 million previously raised from Trinity Ventures, Rustic Canyon Partners and IdeaLab – each of which is also participating in the new round. The site originated with IdeaLab.

The company also announced an executive team that includes President and CEO Julie Schoenfeld; Chief Revenue Officer Tim Ruder, a longtime exec at Washington Post.com; and Chief Strategy Officer Rob Barrett, who was previously Executive VP for Tribune Interactive and head of LATimes.com.

CSO Rob Barrett will be joining Examiner.com CEO Rick Blair and Associated Content President Luke Beatty on our “aggregators” panel at Marketplaces 2010.

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AlikeList Launches Self-Serve ‘Minute Ads’ for SMBs

March 3, 2010


Self-serve ads will bring the SMB masses to the Web. But they haven’t made much of a dent in SMB advertising at this point. That hasn’t stopped a rush of new self-serve products coming out, several married to social media features. The latest is “minute ads” from AlikeList, one of the new crop of social/directory plays that also includes RedBeacon, ThumbTack, HelpHive, PriceLocal, Center’d and many others.

AlikeList’s Minute Ads allow business owners to create and publish offers on the fly, and change the offers as often as they like. They can be sent out to consumers that specifically request recommendations for a specific type of provider (i.e. plumber).

The Minute Ads are part of Alikelist’s “Business Central” platform, which is being priced at $19.99 a month. Included in the subscription is a “PromoSite,” along with presence and reputation management capabilities that enable customers to see how many people have “liked” or “want to try” their business, or who have clicked to their Web site or phone number.

CEO Jim Delli Santi believes that ALikeList’s like-only platform is highly differentiated from simple reviews and ratings sites (i.e. Yelp and Citysearch). “Review sites are more like media companies broadcasting review content generated from consumers,” says Delli Santi.

In theory, the site also does away with the “volume” problem of not enough reviews on a social site by letting users see “likes” from their friends, friends of friends, and then also from all over the Web.

By focusing only on “likes,” it also skims off the negative reviews. That obviously has pros and cons. I tend to like negative reviews because they provide nuance and important warning signs and make for entertaining reading. But negative reviews may also be the work of consumer vigilantes, and they don’t necessarily help people quickly find a business that they want to use.

AlikeList CEO Jim Delli Santi is speaking at Marketplaces 2010 on a hot session with RedBeacon CEO Ethan Anderson and Reply.com COO Sean Fox.

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Marketplaces 2010: 3 Weeks to Go!

March 2, 2010


In less than three weeks, we’ll be holding the third (and best) edition of Marketplaces, the only event dedicated to the great opportunities caused by rapid verticalization of local media and services.

Marketplaces 2010 takes places March 22-24 in my hometown of San Diego, which we call “America’s Finest City.” The speakers say they are ready to go, our research team is developing some cutting-edge analysis, and the networking ought to be terrific.

Here’s the near-final lineup (in alpha)

Keynotes:
Jon Brod, EVP, AOL
Jay Herratti, CEO, Citysearch
Andrew Mason, CEO, Groupon
Sam Sebastian, Director, Local & B2B Markets, Google
Craig Smith, CEO, ServiceMagic

Featured Speakers:
Rich Abronson, VP, Gumiyo
Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder, Loopt
Ethan Anderson, CEO, RedBeacon
Alec S. Andronikov, CEO, MoVoxx
Jeff Beard, CEO, Localeze
Luke Beatty, President, Associated Content
Rick Blair, CEO, Examiner.com
Reed Brown, CEO, Matchbin
Jim Delli Santi, CEO, Alikelist
Craig Donato, CEO, Oodle
Todd Dubner, SVP, NCI
Jennifer Dulski, CEO, Center’d
Sean Fox, COO, Reply.com
Krista Glotzbach, VP, Vast.com
Jordan Glazier, CEO, Eventful
Krista Glotzbach, VP, Marketing, Vast.com
Craig Hagopian, President, LocaladXchange
Martin Herbst, GM, Kijiji U.S., eBay
Ryan Hoppe, Product Manager, ATG Optimizations
Greg Issacs, Executive Director, AT&T Interactive
Scott Jampol, Sr. Director, Marketing, OpenTable
Jaan Janes, CEO, Pulse360
Ken Kalb, CEO, Analog Analytics
Joelle Kaufman, SVP, Adify
Warren Kay, VP, Fox Audience Network
David Kidder, CEO, Clickable
Bill Lange, CEO, FullSlate
Steve Larsen, CEO, CallSpark
Tony Lee, Chief Alliance Officer, Adicio
Alex Muse, co-founder, Big in Japan (ShopSavvy)
Colin Pape, CEO, ShopCity
Brad Petersen, VP, Matchcraft
Ben Saren, CEO, CitySquares
Jared Simon, VP, TurnHere
Eric Singley, Mobile Product Manager, Yelp
Julie Smith, Group Product Manager, SuperMedia
Andy Steuer, CEO, MercEngines
Mat Stover, CEO, Local Matters
David Sturtz, CEO, RepairPal
David Vazdauskas, President, Local Thunder
Darren Waddell, VP, MerchantCircle

Beat the “at the door” price. Register here. Unsure what to expect? Check out the Webinar we did last week.

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Centro Launches Transis, a Cloud-Based Ad Buying Service

March 2, 2010


Centro, the local and regional media service company, has branched off into Web-based support for ad management. The company today announced the launch of Transis, a new division dedicated to automating the “other 80 percent” of the display industry not served by cut rate ad exchanges and demand side platforms. Specifically, Transis has been developed to make it easier for agencies and media buyers to buy premium display advertising by helping everything in one place. This includes all their research, site selection, negotiation, planning and buying, campaign management and billing reconciliation.

In development since 2005, and built at a cost of $11 million, Transis represents a significant “phase two” for Centro, which now has 11 offices and 115 employees. “First, we were helping advertisers place locally,” notes CEO Shawn Riegsecker. “The second part is build media software that would help scale the business for agencies across the U..S.”

But Riegsecker thinks the risk will pay off big time. He notes that many agencies are currently charging a premium for online ads because, ironically, of all the extra labor involved. “The fact is digital is more complex and the digital budget is much smaller. It doesn’t scale very well when contracts are held in different Outlook folders. It takes a long time to process 15 websites. Imagine buying 100 websites. It just doesn’t happen,” he says. The addition of mobile,video, social and search complicates things even more.

Riegsecker claims that Transis, which provides full service information for 50 categories, makes buying “26- to-46 percent more efficient.” He also says it will eliminate the “double and triple entries” that plague ad buyers today. Transis, very simply, opens the way for agencies “to place more creative buys than any opportunity in the past,” he says. “It moves us into a software supported services model.”

Centro, of course, isn’t the only company moving ads into an automated environment. Google last week unveiled DoubleClick for Publishers, which provides many of the same automated features for publishers on the selling side. It will likely complement Transis’ buy-side solution.

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ReachLocal Adds Presence and Reputation Management Via SMB:LIVE

March 1, 2010


As it readies its expected public offering, ReachLocal is branching out beyond its roots as a third party SMB reseller for Google and others. First, it started selling display.Now it is set to offer improved search optimization, digital presence and reputation management via the acquisition of SMB:LIVE.

Other companies in the space have made similar moves to branch out beyond their reseller roots to solidify their relationship with SMBs. Marchex and Yodle for instance, have major organic search and reputation management initiatives underway.

The acquisition of SMB:LIVE will enable SMBs to use Reach to publish multimedia content from a single interface to a business profile page, as well as to local directory sites, search engines and social media sites, including Twitter and Facebook. In addition, Reach will monitor local review sites, social media sites, and local blogs for references and comments related to the SMB.

SMB:LIVE occupies a rapidly evolving space that also includes such companies as Google, Yahoo, Yellowbot, MerchantCircle, ShopCity, Brownbook and various IYP sites. It started out providing upsellable free websites for ISPs that had separated from their Yellow Pages Business. A couple of years ago, it launched operations for BT TradeSpace. Last year, it also launched TelMex.

The company has continually added features, such as video and blogs. But the company has recently focused on scaleable cloud profiles that are entirely Web based and enable “write once, publish many times” functionality.

SMB:LIVE’s Cloud Profile also enables SMBs to publish updates using email and SMS text messages – tools that they’re already comfortable with. The service also includes a “virtual coach” to remind and encourage SMBs to regularly update their profiles and engage prospects in online conversations.

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