This article from Forbes.com analyzes the highly competitive online mapping space and the monetization strategies that are starting to be seen. There are also many smaller start-ups that play a part in the online mapping food chain, according to the article:
Trulia.com, for example, is a real-estate search engine company that relies on Google’s mapping software. …

So the news alert comes in over the PR Newswire: "Yellow Pages Face Extinction Due to PaperlessPetition.org." Using Earth Day 2006 as its excuse, PaperlessPetition.org essentially suggests that publishers eliminate print Yellow Pages in favor of Internet directories. The author has done his homework. He cites our research showing that the largest percentage of teenagers …

This morning I had the chance to talk to ZiXXo CEO Mike Hogan. ZiXXO has positioned itself as a platform provider for online coupon distribution and syndication. It also has a destination site where users can look up local coupons and print them.
This not only serves user intent and can drive traffic to a …

Reports came out over the weekend that Yell Group is the sole remaining bidder for Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion, the publicly listed Spanish publisher that is 60 percent owned by Spanish telecom Telefonica. According to news reports, several private equity groups have dropped out of the race. With only one bidder remaining, the clear …

My colleague Matt Booth and I had the chance to talk with the folks at Yokel this morning. The company offers a local search engine (currently in beta) for offline shopping. The value proposition is that its search algorithms are acutely tuned in to a much smaller and more relevant data set (local retailer …

This ClickZ article has more on vertical sites (an addendum to the previous post) and on Google Base’s potentially disruptive effect on existing online classified verticals. An interesting read.

Yahoo! has launched a new mail interface that appears to carry the title Yahoo! Mail Beta. It was advertised to me as AT&T Yahoo! Mail, as I am an AT&T broadband customer who is served by the content partnership between AT&T and Yahoo!. (This also includes a version of My Yahoo! that is optimized for …

Google announced today the beta launch of its new online calendar application. Cnet has a good write-up here.
The calendar program will be functionally similar to the calendar module in Microsoft Outlook that many people use. However, there will be a lot more possibilities for tie-ins with other online services across the Googleverse.
The calendar …

Search Engine Journal points to an AP article that reports Verizon is testing pay-per-phone-call ad auctions in a Boston-area print book. A generic ad is given and "dynamically assigned," meaning it connects users to whatever local business won the auction for calls. My colleague Charles Laughlin wrote about …

Australian publisher Sensis has launched GoStay, a print + online travel service that TKG wrote about in a recent article in Local Media Journal. Here is an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the new service.
This is another example of a "vertical hybrid" in which directory companies attack …

The message from the ADP Annual Convention last week and my colleagues Carlotta Mast and Charles Laughlin's Advisory this week is that independent publishers continue to be growing quite nicely, thank you.
The mood at ADP in Tampa was very positive as President Larry Angove and outgoing Chairman Jim Hail took on a much less …

I don’t normally read every scoping announcement Yellow Pages publishers issue via e-Linc, but a recent one caught my eye. Yellow Book announced that it is combining a Burbank book and a Glendale book and offering the market a wide-area book covering the two markets. Having grown up there, I know that these two communities …

Last month, Cox Enterprises and Landmark Communications announced a reshuffling of the deck chairs, with Cox taking a more significant position in the "auto" related marketplaces and Landmark focusing on more niche or specialty oriented publications and Web sites.
Cox will now control 87.9 percent of AutoTrader.com, which currently offers the largest selection of vehicles …

Google's announcement of a US$90 million click fraud settlement is making the rounds on various blogs and news sites. The Kelsey Group believes more legal issues around the topic of click fraud will arise. Our view is that the solution to click fraud already exists in the CPC bidding engine. Advertisers that feel they are …

Last week, in Hempstead, New York, city bureaucrats voted to approve Verizon's application to build a competitive television distribution system. The final ruling was probably not ever in doubt given the intense lobbying effort being put forth by Verizon and AT&T to win approval for their video network build-out plans. What did surprise was the …

Last week 250,000 editions of The Baltimore Examiner were tossed to homes in and around the Baltimore area. That's right — The Baltimore Examiner not The Baltimore Sun. Interestingly, The Baltimore Sun — the 169-year-old incumbent newspaper — offers its advertisers a similar "paid" circulation count (247,193). Like many newspapers around the country, The Baltimore …

Not a lot of time to blog today so here is a roundup of notable happenings.
—The bidding war to unwire San Francisco with citywide Wi-Fi is over, and the winners are … Google and EarthLink. Here are write-ups from the San Jose Mercury News and Search Engine Journal. We’ll go deeper into this …

The ADP Annual Convention and Partners Trade Show kicked off officially this morning with presentations by outgoing ADP Chair Jim Hail of Hagadone Directories and President Larry Angove. The tone was much less adversarial toward incumbent publishers than it has been in the past, tracing primarily to the growth of independents.
Hail's major message is that …

An interesting list of reasons why some people choose online over local offline shopping.

Om Malik reports on the staggering growth of MySpace traffic, while this Guardian Unlimited article challenges how the site will make money in the face of recent bad PR, lack of a (clear public) monetization strategy and the historic failures of social networking sites. An interesting debate.
Back in February, …