Four million babies are born in the U.S. every year. Hence the interest of two e-commerce portals in local baby sites. Just last week, UrbanBaby.com, an e-mail-oriented baby-care tip sheet, was sold to CNET, and LilaGuides, a print-oriented local baby guide that features user reviews, was sold to The Knot, the marriage-oriented e-commerce portal.
UrbanBaby …

Sallie Mae announced that it has signed an agreement to purchase Upromise. Sallie Mae services more than 10 million customers totaling US$130 billion in loans. Upromise launched in 2001 and has grown into one of the largest direct marketing companies for the popular 529 college savings plan. Currently, it administers more than …

Monster's deal to partner with the new owners of Philadelphia Media Holdings "would work with other newspapers," but probably makes more sense with papers in smaller markets, Monster CEO Andrew McKelvey told Reuters. McKelvey also said the Philadelphia deal was opportunistic and that no other newspapers are waiting in the wings.
"Would we consider a …

Interchange Corp. and Verizon SuperPages will partner to deliver SuperPages.com customers via Interchange’s Local.com search engine. Here is the press release.

Just saw a note from media analyst Ben Mogil of Westwind Partners that takes issue with the conclusions of a recent report from Veritas suggesting that Yellow Pages Group’s core print directory business is imploding, citing a sharp reduction in page counts in key markets.
Here is my post from last week regarding …

College newspapers are often overlooked as part of the local ecosystem. Local newspapers in college towns such as Lawrence, Kansas, and Austin, Texas, vie with college papers (a little) for advertising. And classified vendors such as LiveDeal and Ad2Ad have begun working with various college paper networks. College communities are an excellent target for used …

Here is an item from Bloomberg that says buyout firm KKR will saddle up PagesJaunes with a record level of debt for a European LBO, about US$8 billion. This will certainly motivate PagesJaunes managers to optimize cash flow.

This morning I had the chance to talk to Julie Mason, general manager of Kellysearch. The site is a B2B vertical search engine and directory that mostly focuses on industrial products, services and equipment. Basic listings are free with the option for additional levels of paid enhancements and upsells, such as hosting a …

The Kelsey Group is preparing a report scheduled for release in September that evaluates the current field of online directory and local search sites.
Part of the process of researching this report involves soliciting the views of the industry on how various products stack up and also what makes for a good online directory/local search product. …

CNET ran a report stating Google ads are running on a Detroit-based radio station. This is part of the strategy revolving around the dMarc acquisition last year. Other portals and ad networks have not been shy in suggesting that they will also pursue offline ad opportunities. This naturally suggests, given the acquisitive nature of …

Just got off the phone with Olivier Vincent, CEO of Canadian Phone Directories. He told me that his company, a competitive publisher backed by HM Capital (formerly Hicks Muse), has just acquired the search engine Yellow.ca to use as a platform for its online strategy.
CPD is taking on Yellow Pages Group, particularly …

A report issued July 19 by the stock analysis firm Veritas Investment Research has led to a sharp drop in the unit price for the Yellow Pages Income Fund, which owns Canadian publisher Yellow Pages Group.
According to this article, Veritas analyzed more than 33,000 pages of YPG Yellow Pages ads from 2003 …

Yahoo! Local GM Paul Levine will join Kelsey Group VP Matt Booth and Small Business Commando Dick Larkin for a Tele-Seminar next Wednesday, Aug. 2, at 2:30 p.m. EDT/11:30 a.m. PDT.
The event will look closely at small-business marketing on the Internet. Booth will provide a proprietary snapshot of current small-business usage and spending, while …

Kate Bowler of Platefood points out that Platefood Performance is a PFP platform and not, as I suggested, a local search platform. It may well be that the Platefood engine will be licensed by World Directories to complement the Local Matters local search engine.

Prolific journalist and blogger Mark Glaser takes a detailed look at social media and community-edited news. More specifically, he asks whether the users who do the tagging, reviewing and in some cases editing that fuel some news sites’ notable success (i.e., Digg) should share in the fruits of that success. In other words should they …

Google announced earlier this week that it will infuse live traffic data in its mapping application that can be accessed from Web-enabled mobile devices. Live traffic data is available on Yahoo! Local and in the newest release of Windows Live Local, but neither company has ported the functionality to mobile mapping products. We expect that …

Apple is now offering Warner Bros.' television content through its popular iTunes store. Television shows like "Friends," "Babylon 5," "The Jetsons" and the never before seen pilot episode of "Aquaman" are now available. (Calls to agent Ari Gold were not returned.)
Apple has already sold 35 million videos through its iTunes storefront, which clearly puts it …

Two deals were announced to distribute Hollywood studio content this week. The first, reported by MSNBC, involves the sale of the episodic television show "Arrested Development" to Internet portal MSN and cable networks HDNet and G4. (Read: Warner and Apple here).
This is the first time a Web portal has purchased first-run …

Fast moving classified aggregator LiveDeal announced yesterday that it will partner with classified transaction engine AdStar. The deal will allow LiveDeal to offer its online classified advertisers a print upsell in the 40-plus newspapers AdStar works with, which include the Houston Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times and Denver Post.
This will include a tool offered to LiveDeal classified …

Yahoo! announced today that it will partner with BT to bring 120,000 UK business listings to Yahoo! Local UK. The deal also positions Yahoo! to better serve UK local businesses with its YSM paid search platform, which now allows advertisers to target specific geographies in their SEM campaigns. More on that here and here. …