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Online restaurant ordering and discovery giants GrubHub and Seamless have agreed to merge their operations, creating a single company. Chicago-based GrubHub currently serves more than 20,000 food ordering establishments in 500 cities, while New York-based Seamless serves more than 12,000 food ordering establishments in 400 U.S. cities plus London.
GrubHub CEO Matt Maloney, …

SuperMedia and Dex One completed their merger today, creating Dex Media, a company with annual revenues of approximately $2.6 billion (based on combined 2012 revenues), with about $500 million in digital revenue. The combined company also has 2,700 sales reps and roughly 665,000 advertisers.
The combined company is the second largest directory publisher in the United …

Well, another shoe has dropped in the U.S. directories market. This morning Dex One and SuperMedia announced plans to merge, creating an an entity called Dex Media with roughly $3.1 billion in revenue, based on 2011 results. Dex shareholders will have 60 percent of the new company’s shares with SuperMedia shareholders getting the remaining 40 …

Constant Contact has made a really big bet on presence management with the acquisition today of SinglePlatform, a provider of a one-stop “write once, read everywhere” presence management network that provides parsed searching capabilities and services for 600,000 SMBs, including 10,000 paying customers. The service also has valuable partnerships with a growing roster of major …

Today, Yell announced its acquisition of Moonfruit, a United Kingdom DIY website and online shop builder, for approximately GBP 18 million, funded out of Yell’s cash reserves. Retention bonuses of up to GBP 5.2 million will be paid to key members of Moonfruit management after two years, provided that they remain exclusively employed by Yell. …

AT&T has finalized the sale of 53 percent of its Yellow Pages operation to the private equity firm Cerberus Capital, which has launched YP Holdings LLC. The new company will be led by newly appointed CEO David Krantz, who had been running AT&T Interactive, the digital arm of AT&T’s directories business.
The remainder of the leadership …

Bloomberg News is reporting today that AT&T is close to a deal to sell a majority stake in its Yellow Pages operation (AT&T Advertising Solutions, the world’s largest directory company, in a deal that prices the business at US$1.5 billion. This price works out to a multiple of 1.5X EBITDA. AT&T is expected to hang on …

On yesterday’s AT&T earnings call, CEO Randall Stephenson opened the door to the possibility that the telecom giant would sell off its directories business.
Here is what Stephenson said on yesterday’s earnings call: “That’s one area that we’re going to obviously take a very hard look at, and while I don’t want to give any indication …

The European directory and local search operator Truvo has taken major steps toward consolidating around its flagship Belgian operation. On Dec. 22, Truvo “divested” its operation in Ireland, selling it to Contact Holdings, which operates Yellow Pages companies in the Baltic States. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Truvo has also dramatically curtailed its senior …

The events listings space has taken a number of twists and turns with Zvents trying to steer people to retail events as a business model, and also become a media driver in its own right; Eventful focusing more and more on Hollywood studios and TV shows to drive viral demand for their entertainment properties; GoldStar …

Yodle, a third-party SMB reseller, announced yesterday that it acquired ProfitFuel, a company that provides search engine optimization services to small businesses, for an undisclosed sum. David Rubin, previously CEO of Profitfuel, will now join Yodle as senior vice president of sales. ProfitFuel’s main service called Outrank is designed to generate inbound phone calls and …

 
2010 was a dismal year for the New Zealand branch of Deutsche Bank after exposure to the Yellow Pages Group restructuring. The KPMG Financial Institutions Performance Survey issued last week shows that Deutsche ranked at the bottom out of 10 New Zealand branch banks on key measures, including a $53 million loss for the financial year, …

Crushed by a “perfect storm” of debt and declining revenues, TMP, once the dominant player in the Yellow Pages agency (CMR) space, will cease to exist within a few days. However, we have learned that several of the agency’s more valuable local offices and their associated clients have been sold off to rival agencies.
According to one …

Canada’s Yellow Media announced today that it has sold its Trader Corp. vertical media business to the private equity firm Apax Partners for C$745 million. The deal lets YPG focus on transforming its core directories business and the cash helps improve the company’s balance sheet. YPG is not completely getting out of the vertical media business, at …

Reply.com has carved out a niche among online marketing companies by offering an auction marketplace for locally targeted consumer traffic for various verticals (home improvement, autos, real estate, insurance, etc.). Now, it is set on building a mobile strategy. The company recently announced that it has acquired AdHubs, a mobile app developer that sees vertical …

AOL will buy The Huffington Post for $300 million in cash and $15 million in stock, and put Arianna Huffington in charge of the AOL Local sites (MapQuest, Patch, MovieFone) as well as its growing collection of opinionated tech and vertical news properties, such as TechCrunch, Engadget and Popeater. AOL’s vertical sites, such as …

Local.com, which recently introduced an integrated coupon and sales platform as part of its relaunch, has announced that it will enter the group buying/deal-a-day space via the acquisition of iTwango, a Los Angeles-based start-up that launched in October. The company, founded by former Citysearch CTO Hal Oreif, will be rebranded under Local.com.
The company’s first group …

Fresh in the wake of reports that Google will spend at least $5.3 billion on Groupon, LivingSocial — the Avis of deal a day — has announced a $175 million investment from Amazon. It simultaneously announced an additional $8 million investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners.
“If you want to become the biggest local commerce player, …

Scheduling is seen as the next wave of  online marketplace services for SMBs, encouraging sticky usage, premium features and, in some cases,  highly contextual advertising. Scheduling vendors such as Agendize, Full Slate, MaxiPage and X Time are actively syndicating solutions.
Jumping aboard the scheduling trend is MerchantCircle, the SMB services company with 1.3 million registered SMBs. …

FreshGuide.com, which includes the BookFresh.com scheduling service, has been acquired by Sugar Inc., a diversified media company that includes a TV network and programming aimed at women, as well as ShopStyle, a “social shopping service.”
FreshGuide.com founder Ryan Donahue says the acquisition will enable the company to expand beyond its four existing markets — San Francisco, …