The Wall Street Journal reports on AT&T’s announced management restructuring today that puts wireless division chief Ralph de la Vega in charge of a broader consumer markets division. This division will encompass television (U-verse), telephone, wireless and broadband services.
This seems in part like a move toward a more unified bundle of products, and the eventual …

After some disappointing metrics coming out of the contextual ads it places on MySpace, Google has begun to look at other ways it can serve ads in online social communities.
This could essentially involve a more granular look at not only what content is on the page but also the dynamics of the social graph itself. …

Zvents, which is seeking to transform the events category to a broader “what, when and where” category that encompasses local entertainment, organizations and businesses, has announced $24 million in new funding from AT&T (i.e., wireless and Yellow Pages), Nokia Growth Capital and NAVTEQ.
The funding is on top of $7.2 million previously raised from Vantage Point …

Here are the highlights from the TKG blog last week, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full.
EADP Conference: Thoughts on Pricing Strategy
Among the interesting sessions here at the European Association of Directory Publishers’ annual congress here in Athens, I thought I’d share a few takeaways from a presentation …

Among the interesting sessions here at the European Association of Directory Publishers’ annual congress here in Athens, I thought I’d share a few takeaways from a presentation regarding pricing strategy. The speaker was Mark Billige of Simon-Kucher & Partners. The issue of pricing also came up in some subsequent presentations, in particular a talk given by …

Earlier in the week, Jivox grew its publisher network where it distributes the self-serve videos that small-business advertisers create. Like a growing crop of local video producers, these are stock videos that are customized with text and logos.
I just got off the phone with CEO Diaz Nesamoney, who claims the network now consists of more …

Fox Interactive Media’s MySpace is seeking to jump-start local and small-business advertising by launching a homegrown Self-Serve Ad Service. Initial advertisers are likely to be rock bands — the first major segment to have adopted MySpace itself — but the service hopes to move up the food chain as time goes on.
Fox is making several …

I like all the services using LinkedIn as their platform for social networking. The local implications haven’t really come into focus yet, but the latest publisher to put something out is BusinessWeek, with its Business Exchange.
Developed by former PowerOne Media tech guy Isaac Sacolick, Business Exchange uses LinkedIn profile information as a base, crawls the …

I’m here in Athens this week at the European Association of Directory Publishers’ annual congress. Nice line-up of speakers thus far, many of whom are echoing the themes that we heard emerge at The Kelsey Group’s DMS ’08 conference last week in Atlanta.
European Directories CEO Cornel Riklin was one of the keynote speakers to open the …

OK, we’ve got the format(s) and “best and brightest” speaker roster set for Interactive Local Media: Extending Local Channels, which is Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, California, next to San Jose.
At the top of the list is Angie Hicks, “the Angie” from Angie’s List, and Rodney Rice from ServiceMagic. They’ll tell it all during one-on-one …

Yahoo announced today from the ADWEEK conference that it will launch a new ad platform called APT. It is meant to be a one-stop shop for media buys across Yahoo’s growing sources of localized inventory. This includes its own network as well as that of the growing list of partners (782) in its newspaper consortium.
Unlike …

Web.com announced today that it will bundle its Web creation and hosting services with MerchantCircle’s online product suite for small and medium-sized businesses. This will include analytics and search engine optimization services for Web sites that SMBs create.
This represents another move by MerchantCircle to beef up its SMB offerings. It seems to further the strategy …

Placing and managing national ads on different Internet Yellow Pages sites in different regions has been too difficult. It is one reason why more national advertising probably hasn’t flowed to local sites. But now Superpages.com, DexKnows.com and several other sites have embraced a one-stop local online marketplace developed by Miami-based MediaTraks.
The platform acts as the …

Hispanic Yellow Pages of America has ceased operations, according to a notice distributed on Monday via ELINC, a Yellow Pages Association’s electronic newsletter providing updates on the directory industry to the CMR community. 
Chicago-based  HYPA had grown primarily through acquisitions since its inception in 2004. According to The Kelsey Group’s Global Yellow Pages 2007 report, …

Online video creation tool and ad network Jivox today announced that it will bring a series of new publishers into the network. These include Examiner.com, Acuweather.com and MediaNews Group.
This will add more locally relevant inventory to its network and increase the appeal of its overall platform for small and large businesses that want to target …

After more than a year of speculation about a “GPhone,” the Google-powered G1 phone was unveiled today in New York. As we reported last month, this will be a T-Mobile phone (built by HTC), and it will be available to T-Mobile subscribers for $179 starting Oct. 22 (two-year contract).
It features a touch screen that slides …

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV company, is set to upsell its vast body of video advertisers via a new deal with Mixpo, the Seattle-based venture-backed company dedicated to making video “actionable” across multiple platforms. For Mixpo, the deal represents its first foray into cable. It already has deals with several newspapers, including The Houston …

Last week, DMS dominated our blog coverage, with lots of takeaways from the show. Here is a sampling of posts, in case you missed any.
Future Search: Where Will We Be in Five Years?
DMS ’08 concluded with a “big thinker” panel and a format that batted around questions in the form of “in five years … …

Dex announced today that it is packaging its local search functionality into a series of widgets.
This will allow users to plant mini search boxes in different places where they might prefer to do local searches, other than the IYP site itself (DexKnows). It will include both Web widgets that can be affixed to personalized start …

DMS ’08 concluded with a “big thinker” panel and a format that batted around questions in the form of “in five years … ”
Panelists:
Geoff Avard, GM, Strategy, Sensis
Perry Evans, President, CEO, Local Matters
Sebastien Provencher, Cofounder, VP Product Management, Praized Media
Ken Ray, VP and CMO, AT&T Publishing & Advertising
The panel was more forthright than usual for …