Fwix, a social news site that launched last summer, has just launched a local search iPhone app (via TechCrunch). It will be an all-in-one local app that aggregates latest news, blog posts, Yelp reviews, crime reports and other info that can be pre-filtered by users’ preferences.
The user interface will be based on a map (including …

Gabriels and Endeca have launched a new white-label auto portal. The effort formally kicks off a recently announced partnership to inject Endeca’s search capabilities into Gabriels’ vertical sites.
The new portal moves away from a simple listing product, offering a stronger media play that can compete with industry leaders such as AutoTrader and Cars.com. The site …

The New York Times publishes separate sports and business sections on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It may soon move away from separate sections altogether. This past Saturday, there was not a single display ad in either the sports or the news sections of the paper. There was less than a quarter page of classified advertising.

When I went to work in the new Information Services Division of Dow Jones in 1980, I was taken on a tour of the newsroom including the area where the news wires spit out a continuous flow of information called the broad tape. I remember being told that the first responsibility a reporter had was …

Thanks again to all those who attended Marketplaces 2009. If you missed the show, or any of our coverage, below is a collection of posts from the week.
Marketplaces 2009: Top 10 Takeaways
Thanks to everyone who came out to L.A. for the Marketplaces 2009 conference  this week — and to everyone who followed us on the …

Longtime U.S. independent publisher White Directory (owned by Hearst Corp.) has launched a complete rebranding, dropping the old “Talking Phone Book” in favor of “LocalEdge.” The company says it plans to phase in the new brand over the next 12 months.
In our view, the rebranding is way overdue. “Talking Phone Book” is a brand that …

The Yellow Pages Association released some details of its 2008 U.S. usage study, which showed a substantial drop in print references, mostly but not completely offset by online Yellow Pages usage growth. Print references, measured for YPA by KN/SRI, dropped about 8 percent from 13.4 billion to 12.3 billion. Online Yellow Pages lookups, as measured by comScore, grew 22 …

Thanks to everyone who came out to L.A. for the Marketplaces 2009 conference this week — and to everyone who followed us on the blogs and Twitter. We had a great time. Here are some top-line takeaways.
1.    The vertical online environment is still immature and will actually grow very healthily over the next several years. …

Thanks to everyone who attended Marketplaces 2009, and a special shout out to those who took part in the Twitter conversation. You can check out most of the tweets from the show here.
Elsewhere, Andrew Shotland talks about the value of social tools like Twitter in conference environments. If you’re not already, follow us on Twitter: …

Oodle CEO Craig Donato led off day three of Marketplaces 2009 describing how classified advertising has gone through an evolution over the past five years, progressing from simply importing them online, to making them searchable and finally today integrating classifieds with social media/user-generated content (UGC). Donato pointed out that while newspapers led the way in …

Vertical networks can leverage their knowledge of their consumers to sell marketers wide-ranging research and media programs, according to Active Network CEO Dave Alberga, who keynoted at the Marketplaces 2009 conference in Los Angeles.
Alberga, a former Citysearch executive in its early days, noted that The Active Network has gained a deep knowledge of 8.5 million …

Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti, in a keynote at Marketplaces 2009 in Los Angeles, stressed that there are four things local sites need to focus on: being “more local,” “mobile,” “social” and “balanced.” “Local is really an evolution,” he said. “Now the evolution is transforming the marketplace from cities down to neighborhoods.” Accordingly, Citysearch has “rearchitected” …

Promotional services that boost SMBs run the gamut from coupons to prizes. The most popular are free offers, discounts off total amounts, and prizes/free gifts, said Matchpoint CEO Peter Adams, who was speaking at Marketplaces 2009.
Adams noted that when companies are contacted by Matchpoint users, 25 percent respond with some kind of a promotional offer. …

AOL Yellow Pages has greatly benefited from search engine optimization, with 50 percent of its traffic coming from SEO, according to Chris Spanos, GM, local search, who was speaking today at Kelsey’s Marketplaces conference in Los Angeles. “We have a very healthy Yellow Pages business,” said Spanos, who called it “the No. 1 independent Yellow …

At the end of the second day of Marketplaces 2009, my colleague Matt Booth made a statement and then asked a follow-up question. He said, “most of what I’ve been hearing from the podium is optimistic. Don’t people realize that this is a challenging business environment? Is this optimism my imagination, or is it real?” …

In a session at Marketplaces 2009 this afternoon on building local online content and services, the oft-cited challenge of scalability took center stage.
“The trick with local is to operate at scale,” said Matthew Berk, Marchex’s executive VP of product engineering. “There are lots of things out there that are phenomenally interesting, but small.”
This was the …

Rob Curley and Chris Jennewein of Greenspun Interactive gave a lively presentation this morning at the Marketplaces conference representing the yin and yang of product features and business models. This is often in a state of imbalance at online newspaper entities.
Greenspun runs the Las Vegas Sun and a number of other properties, including a handful …

NCI President and CEO Dan McCarthy told attendees of Marketplaces 2009 in Los Angeles today that “local marketing spend is going to be reduced tremendously. It will have a big impact on all marketing budgets,” he said.
“Local media starts with price and results, “added McCarthy. “Marketers needs to hold on to as many dollars, especially …

Saw this article today – more evidence that residential White Pages are verging on extinction.
AT&T has gotten the nod from Ohio’s utility regulators to eliminate White Pages from co-bound White/Yellow phone books. First, stand-alone residential White Pages books will go (many have already), then co-bound residential listings. White Pages, particularly residential White, is a cost center that …

Marketplaces is under way with the opening keynote from Jeff Berman, MySpace president of sales and marketing. MySpace has made some inroads to attracting SMBs to use the social network as a marketing platform.
Most recently, this has included its MyAds program. which lets businesses establish a profile in the same way that individuals and …