Local 1.0-2.0

Wanted to bring your attention to a long but good article over at Ben Saren’s blog. The title of the article is Local 1.0. I found his insights and thoughts on where local search is very good. I wanted to focus on the numbers. for this post. You probably heard …

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Zvents Hits the Jackpot

Paul O’Brien just dropped a note by telling me about how Zvents, has secured $24 million in funding from Nokia Growth Partners, AT&T and NAVTEQ. That is a ton of cash!  From their press release, it says: “Zvents will use the proceeds to expand the reach of its local listings …

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SEM Baseball Final Standings

Well we can’t work all the time! This year, a group of SEMs and I got together to form a Fantasy Baseball league-SEM08.  Well the season is over. Depending on who your team was, it could have been a good year. I had a lot of fun doing this baseball …

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Why I Write

A friend, said he can to my blog and was curious what it was all about. He asked if what I was doing was “shady”. LOL I tried to explain to him what it was all about but it got me thinking. Why I am writing here? There are a …

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Final Thoughts on DMS'08

This was my first Kelsey Group conference and I must say I was impressed. The sessions, breaks, snacks, meals were great. Not being a Yellow Pages guy, I learned a lot. It was a lot of fun finally meeting folks I have been talking with via email, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. …

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DMS'08 Day Three

Well I have returned from Atlanta and wanted to post on Day 3 of the Kelsey Conference. Instead of writing on each session, I thought I would comment on them here.  I thought the talks this day were great. 1. First up was Briggs Ferguson, President-Internet, Idearc Media whose talk …

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Monthly Ad Spending by Auto Dealers

Still have some stuff to post about Kelsey’s DMS but got this data from Palore the day, that I wanted to share.  This graph is from reviewing over 2,800 Denver auto dealers and repair shops.  The chart represents the breakdown of advertisers, with and without a website, to low, medium, …

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YELP-Interview With Sonia Survanshi McFarland

Today’s sessions at DMS’08 ended with an one-on-one interview with Sonia Survanshi McFarland, Head of Business Development, YELP and Peter Krasilovsky. What follows is a quick paraphrasing of their conversation. Q. What is YELP? A. This is a city focused directory; which focuses on local community and local reviews. Right now, …

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Building Online Vertical Experiences-DMS'08

Peter Krasilovsky, Program Director for The Kelsey Group hosted a session with Tom Bates, VP & GM, Kudzu, Cox Enterprises, John Busby, VP Product, Marchex, and Joel Toledano, CEO, Krillion Peter began the session off with some of the advantages of verticals: 1. Verticals deliver consumers more relevant content. 2. …

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The "Big" Customer’s Perspective-DMS'08

In this panel discussion at DMS’08, there were a few large service business customers (Avis, Orkin, ServiceMaster) and the topic was the importance of the Yellow Pages to these businesses.  Now these are not your typical small business but I want to provide a general summary of what was stated. …

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