I’m slowly getting around to catching up with all of the local search companies that received accolades at the TechCrunch50 show earlier this month. Rounding out the list is Yext, a company that characterizes itself as a “pay per action” provider.
Essentially what this means is that it has a dashboard for advertisers to organize quality …

I just received an e-mail from Aloqa CEO Sanjeev Agrawal regarding the release of the product’s API for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
In our last writeup on Aloqa, one of the features highlighted was the ability for businesses to create a branded “channel” within the Aloqa app. The benefit here is that it’s much cheaper than …

Caught up with Bill Dinan after our Directional Media Strategies event last week, where he sat on a panel that I moderated called “Fixing the Yellow Pages Business Model.” Much of the session content centered around pay-per-call models.
The same day, Dinan’s company, Telmetrics, issued a press release titled, “Telmetrics Urges Traditional Media to Move to …

The San Diego News Network announced ambitious plans to expand its template for local news, sports, events, lifestyle and entertainment, to 40 North American cities in the next 30 months. The company, renamed  The U.S. Local News Network, already has sites in San Diego and the southwest portion of adjacent Riverside County. It is …

Facebook is tweaking its approach to advertising, given the realities of what’s effective in social media, according to Facebook Director of Monetization Tim Kendall, who was speaking at TargusInfo’s Online Lead Quality Summit last week in Las Vegas. The problem is people who are visiting social networks are not explicitly in “consideration mode,” he noted.
For …

I missed this until now but Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch has an interesting post on Internet radio business models. This is told through the story of Pandora, which had a few brushes with fatality, since being alleviated by grassroots action, funding and a favorable RIAA settlement.
I’ve been a big fan of Pandora for a while, …

There has been kind of a disconnect for me in former Web.com head Jeff Stibel’s twin identities as a top local executive, and as a brain scientist. Not anymore. In a provocative and valuable new book, “Wired for Thought,” Stibel lays out a solid case that the development of the Internet parallels the development of …

Newspapers can still win with a hardcore community focus in their journalism and advertising, and a renewed emphasis on print. Or at least, that’s s the message delivered by Ed Moss, the newly installed publisher of The San Diego Union-Tribune, which was sold a few months ago at a fire-sale price to Platinum Equity, a …

Here is the roundup of coverage from last week at DMS, in case you missed any posts.

CityVoter, the “best of” city service that works with local broadcasters and newspapers, says it has passed the milestone of 3 million votes. The company gets about 1.4 million unique visitors per month and is on pace to increase annual page views to 70 million in 2009. This is nearly 100 percent year-over-year growth, even …

Thanks to all who attended DMS ’09. It was a successful show by all counts, with lots of good content and networking. I took away a lot of new perspective on the ongoing discussion about the Yellow Pages evolving sales channels to be more consultative and “agnostic.” Moving from product selling to solution selling was …

With all the attention focused on the needs and behaviors of SMBs, what about the national channel? (Let’s not forget that national accounts represent roughly 15 percent of total industry revenues in the U.S.) Moderated by conference chair Charles Laughlin, this panel included:
• Nancy Augustine, Senior Vice President, Association of Directory Marketing
• Antony Barran, Chief Marketing Officer, …

Yesterday at DMS, Truvo CEO Donat Rétif took direct aim at tradition by describing a brave new directory world.
Rétif, whose themes were generally aligned with those of many of the speakers at DMS ’09, made a compelling case that there is no going back to the environment Yellow Pages enjoyed for so many years. He …

A panel of online video companies exhibited their wares during the closing session of DMS 09.
Spotzer President Gordon Henry stressed the need for varied products and price points including “montage,” stock video, and documentary style. As we’ve argued, this is necessary to appeal to the wide range of tastes and budgets in the SMB segment.
Spotzer …

The traditional print directory has been under fire over the past few years, but panelists at DMS ’09 feel there is new life in the print book as it moves from its stagnant 1.0 version to become more usable and consumer focused. It’s important to point out that while the perception remains that directories are …

Mobile directory managers from four major global publishers laid out how their mobile products are evolving in a panel billed as an examination of Mobile Search & Yellow Pages: The Business Model.
Some key takeaways:

The stars are aligning for mobile. Device penetration is expanding. The performance characteristics of mobile are strong, notably a strong local affinity …

Are IYPs and online publishers doing as much as they can to promote SEO on behalf of their SMB customers? This and related issues were discussed in the “SEO Success Strategies for IYPs” panel at DMS ’09 this afternoon.
Led by Mike Boland, the panel consisted of four SEO leaders:

Steve Espinosa, VP of Innovation, eLocal Listings. …

David Krantz, AT&T Interactive president and CEO, closed off Day 2 of DMS with a look at how he’s developing the technology backbone to monetize the company’s range of media assets. This includes AT&T advertising & publishing, AT&T Mobile, and triple-play telecom services.
These represent 1.8 billion online searches, 20 million monthly uniques at Yellowpages.com and …

 
The local media marketplace continues its rocky road through the current economy, but many companies are bullish on their futures given the moves they have made in diversifying their product portfolios with new digital offerings to balance their core media products. 
In order to maintain leadership positions in the small and medium-sized business marketplace, the key …

In his keynote message this morning, one message Dave Swanson, chairman and CEO of R.H. Donnelley, relayed was that RHD is going to be investigating geo-specific vertical opportunities, essentially meaning evaluating specific categories in specific cities (i.e., attorneys in Orlando). Swanson’s glimpse into one of RHD’s future strategies provided an excellent segue to the …