Business and Marketing News
Cablevision bet big on synergy (and ignored the CW about the newspaper industry) when it bought Newsday from Tribune Co. last summer for $650 million. Today, less than eight months later, it concedes that it has written off $402 million of that investment (a significantly worse investment than Stephen Marbury of Cablevision’s Knicks). Whether the economics of the … Read more
Starting this fall, Idearc’s SuperPages may be accessed via Instant Messaging as a result of a new relationship with Multiplied Media, the Calgary-based provider of “Poynt,” a local search service that operates over IM. Multiplied Media was formerly known as “IllumiCell.” The “Poynt” platform currently hosts YPG’s Internet Yellow Pages and classifieds in Canada. “It is all about driving … Read more
Video production and uploads have become standard upsells for Internet Yellow Pages, local portals and sales organizations in the age of YouTube. But once a business has a video, what do they do really do with it? How do they drive actions? That’s the question the gang at Mixpo has been trying to answer for the last year … Read more
Google is simultaneously the most open and most shut business I can think of. On one hand, it is amazingly transparent. You walk around the two campuses in Mountain View and you can walk right by Larry and Sergey’s offices. During my short time there, I even spied CEO Eric Schmidt casually ambling by with a … Read more
Among the developers of iPhone applications is The Associated Press. Featured during the relaunch of iPhone 2.0 today, AP’s Benjamin Moss, Director of Mobile Products, said AP developed an iPhone app for its Mobile News Network in “just a few weeks.” Consumers can use the iPhone to send in news and photos. More importantly, AP’s 5,000 press members … Read more
Yell Group President Mark Canon estimated during his opening keynote at Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media show in Santa Clara yesterday that anywhere from $3 Billion to $15 Billion has been spent in the past ten years trying to develop Interactive Local Media. “It is still not clear that we have cracked the code,” said Canon, the … Read more
Walmart has been stepping on the gas in its efforts to extend its audience and keep Amazon and others at bay. Its efforts have won kudos – at the GroceryShop events this week in Las Vegas, the company was specifically singled by Morgan Stanley and others as a digital leader in online groceries. Walmart SVP of Digital Operations … Read more
What is the role of virtual reality as a local or vertical marketing channel? It’s an important question for the industry. What we know is that 360 degree video and other precursor technologies are now being applied for local verticals such as real estate, auto, retail and travel. It is fairly commonplace to get a … Read more
There is a new pyramid for hyperlocal, and it goes like this: data at the foundation, information in the middle and knowledge at the top. So says Localize.city President Steven Kalifowitz. We first profiled the company a couple of weeks ago. In a wide-ranging discussion today, Kalifowitz told us that Localize.city got its start as Madlan in Israel six … Read more
Where do we draw the line between “strategic” initiatives that define the future, and “tactical” approaches that can be readily applied? The average SMB or local marketer wants to be state-of-the-art, but doesn’t want to get too far ahead of customers, or invest in services that don’t ultimately catch on. Some things that we’ve watched … Read more