I don’t write too much on this blog about “hands on” marketing stuff in local, but Michael Gray has put together lots of great content and articles/resources about local this week, including “13 Ways to Promote Your Local Business for Free.”
VentureBeat again writes about forthcoming “Google Killer” search engine Powerset. Unless these guys are thinking 3-5 years (at least) to gain traction, forget it. And it has to be significantly better than what exists now. If it’s only marginally or imperceptibly better, again forget it. This is Microsoft’s problem — not enough differentiation.
NY Times publisher Sulzberger says his “goal” is to “manage the transition from print to the Internet” and he makes the inflammatory remark: “I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either.” The latter is plainly stupid and shortsighted. Print won’t go away (certainly not in five years) nor should it. (Perhaps his fantasy is to get rid of the print cost structure.) Print + Internet/digital is much stronger than online only. The NY Times without the print edition is just another news source with some good writing and other stuff (blogs, video). But with the print edition, it’s a powerhouse brand/much more formidable and has broader reach than online alone.
Related: Right Media VP Bennett Zucker reporting back from the NAA show on the “Amigos-Yahoo” deal, community and hyper-local for newspapers. But as I said before “hyper-local is not enough.”
The big “tech” story yesterday was Yahoo Pipes — mashups for the rest of us. It further simplifies and democratizes data/mashups. Here’s a roundup of coverage and comment. This is definitely the direction, whether this is the right product is another question.
Skyhook Wireless (Loki) location technology is being integrated into SiRF chips. SiRF is the largest maker of GPS chips in the world. Shyhook’s technology will help make GPS better and more reliable. What this means is better location awareness across a range of devices, including mobile handsets. Here’s the release.
Viacom vs. YouTube. Here’s a graph from LostRemote that shows where the traffic is. (Hint: Not Comedy Central.)
February 10, 2007 at 3:22 am |
Hey Greg, I was really surprised that Michael Gray didn’t mention MerchantCircle in his post. Almost every single point he made, MerchantCircle does… and you don’t have to go to all these different sites. I’m not saying a business owner shouldn’t do everything possible, but if you’re really looking for one-stop-shop, with free services, MerchantCircle should be included in the conversation.
We’re at over 85,000 merchants as of this week!