OpenTable, the online restaurant reservation service, has filed an S1 with the SEC to raise $40 million. The company, founded in 1998 by former Citysearch President Thomas Layton, was launched as Easyseats.com. It currently has contracts with 10,000 restaurants in all 50 states, or approximately one-third of U.S. reservation restaurants. It seats roughly 2.8 million diners per month.
Among …

Gary Campbell is among the directory publishing executives with the most experience in building a performance-based ad model in the print product. He is now hoping to leverage that experience in a new venture called Cost Per Call Solutions.
The new company was founded with colleagues from the recently disbanded Canwest Directories operation. CPC Solutions will offer …

Expanding on the bit about text messaging in my previous post, a panel discussion at i2G likewise expanded on the topic.
The idea is that despite its lack of sex appeal (compared with other things happening in the mobile world), SMS is where the action is today. Less than 20 percent of mobile users have smartphones, …

(The View From the 46th Floor)
The bad market for real estate has put a crimp in a lot of real estate marketing (except perhaps for foreclosure sites like Zetabids). The New York Times, on Sunday, found that many real estate sites were flat at best, with some laying off staff. In The Times’ article, Curbed …

I’m at Opus Research’s one-day Internet2Go show in San Francisco where there have been lots of good case studies and concrete talk about mobile marketing. Lots of it is local, but there is a fair mix of agency and brand representation. Even in those cases, key components of the mobile campaign often come down to …

IAC’s ServiceMagic,  a leader in delivering leads to services, has purchased Bethesda,MD- based Market Hardware, which provides websites and search engine optimization for 2,500 SMBs. Market Hardware, which has 30 people, targets “high online spend verticals” that closely mirror ServiceMagic’s base of 56,000 pre-screened professionals.
Market Hardware has relationships with 40 associations in the segments that …

Buzz monitoring has gotten increased attention lately as something that partly falls under the category of online reputation management. BuzzGain is a new company that targets individuals or SMBs with the ability to track this buzz — i.e., where the conversation is happening around their brand.
The idea is that you listen to where conversations are …

The iPhone app store now has 15,000 apps available. So what’s No. 8 (among the free utilities)? RepairPal, an auto site that uses the GPS capabilities of the iPhone to deliver repair auto estimates, a comprehensive repair shop directory and a roadside assistance feature. RepairPal ranks behind such iPhone apps as Sound Grenade, WiFi Checker, myLite …

Our Marketplaces 2009 conference in L.A. is just around the corner (March 16-18). Some great additions have just been announced: Active Network CEO Dave Alberga (our fourth keynote); Yahoo Local leader Atif Rafiq; and all the ins and outs of vertical local mobile services in a Day 3 SuperForum.
The SuperForum has a lot of highlights …

Video creation platform provider Mixpo today announced partnerships with five local media organizations: NBC Local Media, Tribune, Freedom Communications, TownNews.com and Fisher Communications.
The deal will equip each new partner with Mixpo’s VideoAd platform, which will let advertisers create and distribute video ads into the publishers’ existing online advertising systems. For the publishers it provides an …

The Search Engine Strategies conference series has set up a YouTube channel filled with short interviews that are done before and after sessions. They’re typically good snack-sized videos that can give you a general sense of some of the biggest issues in search marketing.
Greg Jarboe and company at SEOPR produce the videos and are nice …

Our post on the latest WebVisible/Nielsen survey data got lots of interest and requests for copies of the report. For anyone who’s interested, WebVisible will hold a free webinar in partnership with SEMPO to talk through some of the findings.
It will be hosted by newly appointed CMO Kevin Ryan and will take place this Thursday …

I’m at the OMMA Social conference put on by MediaPost. It’s mostly attended by ad agencies looking to learn more about engaging users through social networking and blogging — something they’ve probably achieved a C+ for as an industry.
Some of the content is relevant to mobile and local search. As argued, a use case is …

AdReady, the Seattle-based media placement firm and builder of display ad templates for SMBs, has long been on our list of “most interesting” local services. And that was before it signed white-label deals with The New York Times, Boston Globe and MSNBC.com.
Last week, I dropped in on AdReady at its offices in the progressive Fremont …

FixR, a seven-person Boston-area site that bills itself as an “eBay for local services,” has launched. Developed with private funds, the site provides free listings for services and free bids for consumers, but expects to charge a “success” fee when consumers follow through and hire. It has a tagline of “things done, money saved.”
The site, …

Here is a recap of posts from last week, in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full.
Online Video Ads Just Got a Lot More Interesting
The name of the game in online video is integrating ads in ways that are unobtrusive and contextually relevant. These are simply rules we have to …

ComScore released new data today showing that the global Internet population has reached 1 billion.
Asia Pacific accounts for the highest regional share of users (41.3 percent), followed by Europe (28 percent), North America (18.4 percent), Latin America (7.4 percent), and the Middle East and Africa (4.8 percent). By country, China tops the list with a …

The name of the game in online video is integrating ads in ways that are unobtrusive and contextually relevant. These are simply rules we have to live by, as standards have been set for all online media — even before video came along. We can mostly thank Google for that.
We’ve spent lots of time talking …

Following the recent post on MIT coursework devoted to building mobile apps, TechCrunch reports that Stanford is doing something similar with iPhone apps. A number of the applications are approved and some are awaiting iTunes approval. They’re all fairly useful and some are pertinent to local search.
Mobile classified mashup Abode, for instance, was written by …

The New York Times covers a new daily news provider called The Printed Blog that’s building a new model based on what it hopes to be the best of online and offline distribution. As its name implies, this will involve the production of daily print publications with content taken from blogs.
Many questions come to mind, …