It’s safe to say that Ted Leonsis is at the center of the local revolution. He’s done it all, from his early days trying to jumpstart ecommerce at RedGate, to his work building a local framework at AOL (i.e. Mapquest, Digital City, MovieFone, Studio Now); to his current role as Vice Chair, Groupon; Board Member, …

Following in the footsteps of major brands such as Apple, Nike, Harley Davidson and ESPN, LivingSocial is now seeking to enhance its core brand via a retail “experience” center where book clubs, cooking classes, painting classes and performances can all take place.
The effort follows a trial of a LivingSocial membership program with built-in …

The deals culture is shifting from customer acquisition to customer loyalty by necessity. Why? Deals have begun losing high-income women. That’s the view of Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim, a featured speaker at ILM East in Boston March 26-28.
“Daily deals had an initial surge then quickly lost flavor on a key customer segment — …

We’re seeing more vertical players trying to leverage their brands with deal offerings and advertising. The latest one is Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Twenty-two Blue Cross state organizations around the U.S. are working with Analog Analytics to launch Blue365, a deal program offering health and fitness discounts, as well as adjacencies like tax prep. …

Amazon.com, which is moving in multiple directions vis-à-vis local, has agreed to buy TeachStreet, the service for matching teachers and students. Amazon’s interest appears to be less in TeachStreet than in the underlying e-commerce platform for SMBs. The platform already is being used by The Washington Post for its Service Alley SMB leads service.
TeachStreet …

LivingSocial, in a battle with Groupon and other deal providers to gain (and keep) market share, lost an eye popping $558 million beyond its $245 million in net earnings, according to a regulatory filing by Amazon.com, which owns 31 percent of the company. The filing was written about in today’s Washington Post.
The Post article notes …

Local isn’t easy, or even worthwhile. Chris Devore, Seattle-based co-ounder of Judy’s Book, wants to remind entrepreneurs to stay away. In a new blog post, Devore gives three top reasons NOT to do a local + online start-up:
1- There’s no money in it.
2- It doesn’t scale.
3- It’s too obvious.
“Combine expensive, high-touch selling, small budgets and high churn …

The focus for vertical sites is likely to shift in coming months. In addition to regular features, such as listings, many vertical sites will also begin to blend personalized or on-demand “maintenance” information with various social media features such as scheduling and reviews.
We’ve seen it with garden and health sites, and also, increasingly, …

Gilt Groupe confirmed today that it is eliminating 10 percent of its staff, including Gilt City chief Nathan Richardson and Park and Bond CEO John Auerbach.
The luxury-but-discounted goods provider will close several Gilt Groupe offices, including Atlanta, Seattle and Dallas, and several Gilt City offices inherited from last fall’s BuyWithMe acquisition, including San Diego, Houston …

The Home Depot is set to significantly boost its home contractor leads network with today’s acquisition of Redbeacon. No price was announced for the acquisition. The deal puts Home Depot in the same boat as Sears, which has been quietly developing ServiceLive, its own contractor leads service.
Redbeacon, which takes a 10 percent commission for service …

ILM East is coming back to Boston March 26-28 with a lineup of doers and innovators who are transforming and redefining the local space. Highlights include a featured keynote from industry legend Ted Leonsis (Groupon vice chair/AmEx board member/sports team owner/AOL mastermind), along with keynotes/interviews from Jason Calacanis, Leslie Berland, Jay Herratti, Michael Zimbalist and …

Local Corp. has branched out in several directions in an effort to leverage its local platform. It has recently acquired Krillion (retail and product search) and Rovion (rich media platform and integration). Another major effort is its development of Spreebird, a deals company being built on top of its acquisition of Southern California’s Screamin’ Deals.
Spreebird …

The decline of newspaper readership opens a door for other media to head the news cycle, with everything else trickling down to the TV and radio stations and websites that feed off the original content.
That’s the premise for GoLocal24, a local news and lifestyle content company that started with a website and broadcast partnerships in …

Thumbtack, which has set itself to compete against Angie’s List and ServiceMagic in the SMB leads space, has raised $4.5 million from Javelin Venture Partners, with MHS Capital and Tim Draper participating.
The eight-person San Francisco company, founded in 2009, claims nearly a quarter-million active merchants — up from 150,000 in July — and “hundreds of …

A few years ago, the location of businesses became a big question mark, as well as a strategic issue, as people wanted to shop or dine nearby. These “geo-fencing” issues were especially important for Yellow Pages companies.
Since then, search has become more the norm, along with GPS-based phones, which have location baked into them. What …

No one talks much about certain topics after public crashes — even when the opportunity remains clear. Hyperlocal is one of these. TBD.com in Washington, D.C., crashed last February, and there is a lot of speculation that Patch.com has become a cash drain on AOL.com and is not sustainable (although CEO Tim Armstrong asserts …

How big can SMB scheduling be? And how universal across SMB categories? Those are the questions posed by the addition of scheduling to Groupon (Groupon Scheduler) and MerchantCircle, as well as the rise of several independent scheduling sites, such as Full Slate, Agendize, MaxiPage, Appointy and Genbook.
Another contender is Schedulicity, a scheduling pioneer that is …

For newspaper publishers and newspaper readers, iPad apps tend to be nice to have but not especially important. Given the choice of rich newspaper apps like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, I actually opt for the browser versions over the apps: I can see a lot more at once, they’re updated …

More vertical deals are being introduced, as vertical publishers with specific audiences seek to tie deals to existing content, and prove to have better conversion than watered down, one-size-fits-all approaches.
A few weeks ago, we wrote about Local Offer Network’s B2B efforts with Cardinal Health. Now, NimbleCommerce has been pushing on the vertical space, …

CBS plans to build deeper local online content by commissioning specific local topics for articles from thousands of writers at Examiner.com. Both parties were mum about whether revenue sharing is involved but did note that writers will receive a payment plan different from the one they get on Examiner.com.
Leonard Brody, president of Clarity Digital, which …