IBegin has been trying to add its own Web 2.0 sensibility to the listings business, offering free basic directories of businesses, and customization services on an upgrade basis. It now has 150 businesses and organizations subscribing, including schools, local and state government, city services, chambers of commerce, professional associations, hotels, golf courses, newspapers, TV stations …

IAC Vice President Kara Nortman, speaking at Interactive Local Media 2008, provided both a dose of reality and a glimmer of hope about where media companies in the local marketplace are headed. Nortman’s view of what is working well included sites that are building great organic traffic rather than relying on paid traffic, offering a unique …

The “Deconstructing Internet Yellow Pages” panel at DMS ’08 revealed a number of areas in which IYPs need to evolve. Based on Kelsey’s IYP research, conference chair and TKG Program Director Charles Laughlin said, “IYPs appear too conservative and unwilling to do what it takes to win in the local search space.”
One of the …

As many of us have read over the past week, some major hotel chains — Hyatt and Hyatt Place Hotels, Omni and some Starwood properties – have made the decision to remove Yellow Pages directories from their hotel rooms. (Although a call to our September conference hotel, Atlanta’s Hyatt Regency, revealed it has yet to receive …

Yellow Pages Group in New Zealand announced two online partnerships geared toward extending visibility for its advertisers.
The first partnership is with realestate.co.nz, New Zealand’s largest online listing site, and the second is with shopnewwzealand.co.nz, the leading online store featuring New Zealand made products.
According to a Scoop Independent News article, the partnerships ”are the first in a …

Sensis has announced the offering of online auctions on its Trading Post Web site. According to an article in The Sydney Morning Herald: “some two million people already use the www.tradingpost.com.au site to buy and sell goods and services. The company now aims to attract a share of the additional 3.4 million Australians using online auction …

The current distribution of the AT&T’s Real Yellow Pages produced by Dex (R.H. Donnelley) will no longer include the Chicago Metro Residential White Pages.
According to the release:
“Local residential listings are already included in the Chicago Neighborhood directories that we deliver in August, on DexKnows.com(TM) and on YELLOWPAGES.COM, so we felt it was better …

Yellow Pages Group Canada has signed an agreement with Copernic, owners of Mamma.com, to supply local Canadian advertiser listings to the mamma.com search engine. According to the press release from Copernic, “The agreement means local search queries will be served YellowPages.ca listings in premium positions clearly identified as local listings.”
Mamma.com is a well established search …

Closing remarks at the Warrillow Conference in Toronto this week confirmed major opportunities for business-to-business platforms in Canada.
Major Canadian national brands that target the 2.3 million small businesses in Canada plan on increasing their online media budgets in 2008.
E-mail had a planned increase of 54 percent, paid and organic search was up 47 percent, and spend …

The numbers are looking very, very good for the Interactive Local Media:07 conference in L.A. Nov. 28-30. Internally, we think this one is a record breaker. Register and book the hotel while you can. The latter tends to sell out.
In recent weeks, we’ve been putting the final touches on the program. For instance, we’ve added …

When is a local Yellow Pages not a local Yellow Pages? When a global gift shopping catalog is part of the directory. Idearc Media has partnered with Shop Yellow, an online and print gift catalog company offering gift items for every occasion from around the world. Starting with editions in Virginia and Pennsylvania, Idearc plans …

 
I am not a New York City person anymore, in great measure because of the challenge of getting from one location to another. So when I do have to go to New York, I try to cover as much ground as I can. Recently I was able to arrange four meetings in the city on …

While I am in Reston, VA, attending Kelsey’s Directory Driven Commerce conference, I thought it would be a good time to start talking about our next show, which I am co-producing: Interactive Local Media 2007. The show is being done in tandem with SES Local, takes place Nov. 28-30, and is at the Los Angeles …

Marchex released a report today that examines some of the opportunities in local search. The report is written on a basic level to educate a general marketplace on local online media and advertising (while not being overly promotional of Marchex).
It likewise reaches a few basic conclusions that we have examined here on the blog and …

Grayboxx, which ranks local businesses based on the number of mentions they receive on online consumer services, has finally launched, almost a year after I first wrote about it. The service, which assumes that people generally only mention services they like, has repositioned itself as the rating service for small towns that couldn’t hope to …

Yelp has added events to its listings, maps and user reviews in 10 cities — San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, San Jose, Austin, Chicago, Washington D.C., and San Diego. The feature includes a landing page for each event, a comment board and a “will you be attending” feature. Unlike Yahoo!’s upcoming.org, which …

The Utility Belt blog reported that Google recently announced a plan to pay a commission to people who are willing to photograph local businesses and gather information about the company to post on Google Maps. The idea is that self-appointed local “contractors” would be willing to not only gather local information and photos, but also …

John L. Scott, a leading broker in the Pacific Northwest, has carved out a niche for itself as a major implementator of technology, even as it sticks to a full-service model. Speaking at Inman’s Real Estate Connect last week, Chairman and CEO Lennox Scott said “the game plan is real-time real estate.”
Along those lines, Scott …

OK. Here is the truth. As an analyst, you become quite the connoisseur of hockey stick graphs. “I do like the way the chartreuse in the bar chart plays off the light and complements your logo.” I heard that in a meeting once, seriously. Anyway, the sad fact is that the vast majority of these …

In the San Diego edition of AT&T’s White Pages, a minor alphabetical error has some business owners seeing red. According to SignOnSanDiego.com, the latest edition of the San Diego business White Pages ran into trouble with listings beginning with the Spanish prefix “La.” As the article points out: “La Jolla business listings begin and then …