LookSmart announced the launch of five consumer-facing vertical content sites that will serve up LookSmart advertisers. They are: teenja.com for teens, gradewinner.com for "tweens," 24hourscholar.com for college students, and for parents there are parentsurf.com and gobelle.com.
LookSmart predicts that search is going to get increasingly vertical and personal. In this context, that's something of a self-serving …

A March 27 article in the Times of London online edition says Yell Group is planning to pursue an acquisition of TransWestern Publishing, which recently disclosed it had retained Goldman Sachs to “explore its strategic options.”
This report comes as no great surprise to us, since Yell has a well-stated ambition to achieve a true national …

The Kelsey Group and ConStat recently completed the second wave of our User View research project, in which we ask consumers about a range of issues around the use of local media, including both traditional and digital.
One of the many findings from this research got our attention, and we felt compelled to communicate this …

You've probably never heard of DiscoverOurTown.com. I hadn't until Howell R. Jones, VP of Marketing for the Mississippi-based directory, contacted me about their mobile offering.
At first blush it's another city guide-type site that prompts the question: How do these guys think they're going to compete with Google, Yahoo!, Citysearch and the IYP publishers?
But …

Indeed.com formally launches on the same day as Oodle, offering meta-search for Jobs. Here's the announcement.
Indeed is one of several new meta-search job sites.
Indeed and Oodle represent efforts to consolidate and integrate the consumer experience and away from silos or "verticalization." In another context, it's identical to what AOL has attempted to …

Call it a search engine for classifieds.
Started by a couple of the original folks at Excite, Oodle aims to be a comprehensive search engine for classifieds. That's right: Craigslist, eBay, CareerBuilder, Cars.com, newspaper sites — everything.
Right now, they're launching (in beta of course) with three cities: Chicago, Dallas and Philadelphia. But relatively soon, …

ClickZ offers coverage of Google's statement at SES that "local" was bigger than the more established Froogle:
"[Marissa] Mayer said the demand for Google's local search product was surprisingly high. In fact, it drew more traffic in December than Google's shopping search product, Froogle, during the holiday shopping season, and without local search being linked …

eBay, which bought 25 percent of Craigslist from a former employee in the third quarter of last year, has been busy expanding into classifieds, buying up classifieds sites outside the U.S. as part of a strategy to boost growth.
eBay quickly took its learnings from the Craigslist investment and has set up free classifieds sites …

Not surprisingly, Kennard says that private equity is good for the industry because it allows publishers to focus on their core business and expand horizontally. He makes a distinction between the core business of selling advertising and "our franchise of local search." His view is that the industry's most important challenge is to figure out …

Topix.net, a news search/aggregation site, has announced a majority investment from The Tribune Co., Knight Ridder Digital and Gannett Co. These are the major companies behind Classified Ventures and sites like CareerBuilder and ShopLocal, among other online verticals.
Under the terms of the deal — the money was not disclosed — each newspaper will own …

John Battelle has some interesting speculation about the role of Jeeves in IAC post acquisition. In particular, he speculates about a potential merger of search and TV. I agree there are going to be some interesting things happening with TV and the Internet (not limited to search).
Comcast is going to make some interesting …

The New York Times is reporting that Ask Jeeves is to be acquired by IAC for the equivalent of US$1.9 billion in stock. The deal, if completed, makes a certain amount of sense for both companies.
Ask Jeeves has good technology but has been struggling to differentiate itself and grab more search market share. IAC …

Just got in to Newspapers'05 in Dallas, the newspaper industry's mega-show put on by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). This show covers absolutely everything having to do with the industry — except it appears blogs, social networking and RSS.
I'm on a panel Sunday morning (of all times) on online newspapers as local shopping …

Yesterday, after apparent leaks to the press, Yahoo! decided to announce its rumored blogging/social networking service (to launch at the end of the month) — Yahoo! 360. According to AP reports, the service will offer multiple features and allow people to share content, photos, etc.
There are many such applications already (MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, Lycos …

Borrell Associates released a report last week that projected local online ad spending would increase by 46% and hit US$3.9 billion in 2005. The Kelsey Group’s forthcoming forecast is somewhat more conservative (except in the paid search category). However, it focuses exclusively on Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs), Local Search and Wireless (what we call “digital …

Thanks to Justin Sanger of LocalLaunch for pointing out Marty Himmelstein's excellent article on Local Search/IYP.
Himmelstein was something of a pioneer in Local Search and worked for Internet start-up Vicinity Corp. Before being acquired by Microsoft, Vicinity was a provider of private label business locator, mapping, and Internet Yellow Page services (for Yahoo! among …

A9, which recently launched Yellow Pages, has now created a very interesting RSS-based "open search" platform that allows users (once they're signed in) to customize and add "columns" to their A9 interface.
A9 and MyYahoo, as well as some of the new things that AOL is doing, are showing the way toward search personalization for …

This morning, following in Yahoo!'s footsteps (Local Listings) to a degree, Google announced the "Google Local Business Center." It's a free tool for businesses to add or update their business listings that appear in Google Local.
Though the new site, local businesses can add or edit information about their address, phone number, hours of operation, …

The California-based Kaiser Family Foundation last week released research on American youth and media use: "Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-Olds." The study consisted of a nationally representative sample of 2,032 kids (3rd through 12th grade).
The somewhat depressing findings (if you're a parent) are that kids now spend an average of 6.5 …

The Pew Internet & American Life Project, as part of its ongoing telephone survey, polled roughly 2,200 U.S. residents on their sources of political information and news during the past election cycle.
The results are a window into the larger phenomenon of the relationship between traditional media and the Internet.
According to the survey, 75 million …