Business and Marketing News
AT&T Interactive today launched a beta version of YP.com, a website that won’t be heavily promoted but will add cutting edge features to searches, such as expandable local maps in results, aggregated SMB content, and videos, coupons and other promotions. AT&T bought the URL for $3.85 million from LiveDeal in January 2009. A company blog post notes that YP.Com Beta … Read more
The New York Times reports that ESPN, after a successful launch of its local sports website concept in Chicago, is adding three more markets: New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. The Dallas site launches this fall, while New York and LA will start in early 2010. Fifteen staffers are being added for the three sites, which will … Read more
Zillow is buying Trulia, its chief rival, for $3.5 Billion in stock. The two companies – both nine years old — have a lot of overlap currently. But after the deal closes in 2015, they will seek to develop two differentiated marketplaces for real estate-related information, which includes house sales, rentals, mortgage and related national and local … Read more
Almost two years ago, IAC was in a tough situation. It had a leading services referral business in ServiceMagic, whose main rival was Angie’s List, the paid subscription service. But the service wasn’t growing; had relatively low brand awareness; and seemed to be in danger of getting bypassed by a new crop of social media … Read more
Amazon.com, which is moving in multiple directions vis a vis local, has agreed to buy TeachStreet, the service for matching teachers and students. Amazon’s interest appears to be less in TeachStreet than in the underlying ecommerce platform for SMBs. The platform already is being used by The Washington Post for its Service Alley SMB leads service. TeachStreet had raised just over … Read more
We’re over it by now. Yellow Pages aren’t universally used anymore, or as frequently used; and that there is a lot of competition for driving small business sales. But at BIA/Kelsey’s DMS ’11 Summit last week in Denver, one walked away with a real appreciation of the foundational role that Yellow Pages still play in … Read more
Jitter Fingers, a social network for teen and “tween” girls looking for a secure and focused environment (i.e. away from the predators that lurk in MySpace), has launched a local beta version in Los Angeles. It expects to eventually launch up to 300 localized versions. Founder Allen Esrock, a longtime tech headhunter – and the father of … Read more
Marketplaces 2010 takes place just 7 weeks from now in San Diego (March 22-24). We are putting the finishing touches on the program, and have added MANY exciting new speakers in just the past few weeks. The event is totally dedicated to the higher value/conversion/engagement ethos of vertical media. For sure, this isn’t one size fits … Read more
Google’s march into local reached another milestone today with the acquisition of Zagat, a major, international provider of high end restaurant and lifestyle reviews in 100+ cities. Zagat remains a major player in a reviews space it pioneered in 1979. In addition to hosting its patented “30 point” reviews from some 350,000 “surveyors.” Zagat has a … Read more
The new breed of lead providers for services appears to have slowed down. While Angie’s List is all over the air waves, building its consumer base for an expected IPO, and ServiceMagic is performing well for IAC, and expanding, not much has been heard from such new companies as RedBeacon, Cox’s Kudzu, Likelist, HelpHive , Sears’ ServiceLive, and Thumbtack. For at least some of … Read more