Former Citysearch CEO Briggs Ferguson has joined Idearc as president of its Internet division, which includes Superpages, Switchboard, LocalSearch.com and a range of other efforts. I think it’s an interesting choice for both. When I say “interesting” that’s not a euphemism for anything negative. Ferguson is an Internet veteran but isn’t of the yellow pages world — although for a time Citysearch had repositioned itself as a YP product.
He was at Yahoo!, Launch and EMI Music before Citysearch. Ferguson is also on the board of Ripple TV (a very interesting company) that may generate some new things for Idearc in terms of distribution.
Ferguson comes in at a time of challenge for the company but there’s also also openness to new ideas and creative opportunities that were not there in the past.
Screenwerk 
April 3, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I agree this will be “interesting” given that superpages is most likely 4 to 5 times bigger than citysearch. It will be a major culture change for him. The last and only outside person Ideac bought in was their CIO which lasted about 1 year before he resigned.
April 3, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Recall the resignation of Jake Winebaum from RHD (though still an advisor). My guess is that there was a culture clash there. However, I know from talking to the Idearc people that they are ready to embrace a more aggressive approach to the Internet and digital more generally. As I said previously they’re doing lots of things with SEM that are interesting and kind of below the radar.
June 26, 2008 at 12:51 pm
[…] Briggs Ferguson took over the helm at Superpages. Now Mark Canon, formerly of AutoByTel and AOL, is joining Yell as head of […]
December 3, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Rumor is Greg that Briggs Ferguson is no longer the head of Idearc’s Search Engine advertising business. Can you reach out and validate this?
Cheers,
Mike Stewart
-former Idearc Employee-
December 3, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Will let the community. Hadn’t heard that.