As deals verticalize, we’re intrigued by opportunities for B2B plays. MarketSharing is offering deals tailored for SMBs (office cleaning discounts, office copier repair, etc.).
Now, Cardinal Health, a Fortune 20 company, has launched a pilot with Local Offer Network to provide up to 70 percent off professional health practitioner “consumables,” such as medical gloves, hand …

At opposite corners of the niche universe, you have Thrillist for men and Comcast-owned Daily Candy for women. Both lifestyle products, founded as email newsletters/shopping guides, have jumped aboard the deals bandwagon, working with Group Commerce Inc. as their tech provider. They also have a common association with former AOL Time Warner President (and current …

Nir Lempert, CEO of Israel-based Golden Pages, discussed his company’s transformation from print to a vertically focused media player. The key to transforming, Lempert said, has been about empowering consumers. And thus the advertisers and revenues have followed.
In 2004 91 percent of Golden Pages’ revenues were from print products and just 9 percent …

Google’s march into local reached another milestone today with the acquisition of Zagat, a major international provider of high-end restaurant and lifestyle reviews in 100-plus cities.
Zagat remains a major player in a reviews space it pioneered in 1979. In addition to hosting its patented “30 point” reviews from some 350,000 “surveyors,” Zagat has a print, …

Angie’s List issued an S-1 this week as it seeks to raise $75 million from an IPO. The S-1 is full of details about the 16-year-old service reviews company. Its massive, $60 million national ad campaign over the past 18 months, for instance, has produced a membership roster of 820,000 paying households in 170 U.S. …

Fresh on the heels of the sale of Backyard, a local offers company to Pixelfish, entrepreneur Steve Espinosa has assembled a new team to develop “Appetizer,” a mobile-centric service that enables restaurants to offer instant deals via push notifications.
Using the service, which costs $9.95 per month, restaurants can also add menu items and …

SinglePlatform, which places restaurant search info such as menus, specials and photos on search engines and social and mobile media, has raised $3.25 million. The new raise is led by DFJ Gotham Ventures with participation from New World Ventures, First Round Capital and RRE Venture. It is on top of $1.2 million raised in February …

Specialized verticals are a major part of the new marketplaces environment. One vertical we like is TeachStreet, a portal that helps consumers find teachers, and then helps sign them up and process payments.
Along the same lines is TakeLessons, a five-year-old teacher site that is exclusively focused on hooking vetted music teachers with students. The …

The new breed of lead providers for services appears to have slowed down. While Angie’s List is all over the air waves, building its consumer base for an expected IPO, and ServiceMagic is performing well for IAC, and expanding, not much has been heard from such new companies as Redbeacon, Cox’s Kudzu, Likelist, HelpHive, Sears’ …

We’ve been focused so much on deal a day that we sometimes forget it is just part of the mix when it comes to successful SMB promotions. Seth Gardenswartz of SpaBoom, a provider of promotion services for spas and restaurants, held a helpful webinar last week that stressed the six “common elements of successful promotions.”
The …

With Groupon going public, the promotions space is getting tremendously revved up. Hoping to get in on the action are promotional relatives of the deals space, including providers of grocery “cents off” coupons, retail weekly sales (circulars), retail rewards and Buy One Get One Free. While most of these don’t do much with local advertisers, …

So, do we buy shares in Groupon? We don’t provide investment advice, of course, but as we consider its prospects from a non-investment angle, we’ll be watching for answers to the following eight questions – none of which, unsurprisingly, is adequately addressed in the S-1.
1. The cost of the average deal is seen to be …

NBC’s local websites for its 10 owned and operated stations have effectively lowered the average age of users from 44 to 33, boosted the average time spent on site to 12 minutes, and grown its user base to 10 million unique visitors, according to NBC San Diego Director of Integrated Media Sean Monzet, who was …

Reply has acquired MerchantCircle for $60 million in cash and stock in a deal that makes a big bet on SMB, vertical and social marketing. The deal, which should be completed in Q3, brings MerchantCircle’s list of 1.6 million SMBs to Reply’s “leads or enhanced clicks” platform that ties together elements of search and …

MerchantCircle last week quietly added free Request for Quote services for its large base of 1.6 million local merchants, immediately sending out more than 180,000 quotes. The quotes are based on category and locale.
Logistically, consumers who ask for quotes are asked for more information, if needed. They are then routed to merchants. The MerchantCircle …

Some cities have unique professional communities that make them a company town with its own media. Washington D.C., of course, is a government town, well served by Bonneville’s WFED-AM. Similarly Huntsville, Alabama, is a space town; Los Angeles is a movie town; New York is a finance town. Each has its own media.
The medical community, …

Travel deals are hot. Social networks are hot. Group buying is hot. But when travelers go to a new city, they often don’t have the social networks and group buying to live the life…or at least the discounters life.
Gtrot, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based service that has data for almost 100 U.S. cities, plans to take care …

Finally, we have the long awaited merger of a directory with a retail solution. Today, prior to its earnings call, Local.com announced it would integrate product and store availability into its growing suite of women-oriented services by acquiring Krillion.com. The sale price was $3.5 million.
When it was launched in 2006, Krillion was a real …

SeniorChecked, a national network that aids seniors with choosing trustworthy local service providers, is partnering with FirstLight HomeCare, a national franchise that provides non-medical in-home care for seniors. We spoke with SeniorChecked CEO Chris Spanos about trends in the local verification space and how partnering with national franchises will grow his business.
Spanos is selective about …

Today at the AdTech show in San Francisco, Ariana Huffington’s opening keynote focused on local as the venue where the best of social media and new journalism meet.
This comes at a time when social connections are the construct of digital media, taking the place of the dominant, but less personal, search. We’re moving toward a connected …