Idearc Enters Chapter 11

Another sign of the times. I'm sure they think it's because of the economy, and at this point, it will be hard to separate the impacts of the negative economy from the decline of print, but in reality, it's probably a self-reinforcing effect of both. Print was declining already and the economy is accelerating it. Now the question is, will anyone else be following them into Chapter 11?

Kelsey Group Blogs » As Expected, Idearc Enters Chapter 11

MySpace Local Launches (with help from CitySearch)

MySpace has launched a local section of their site, using Citysearch data (although it looks more like a White Label than Co-Brand integration). Most of it seems focused on reviews, which puts them in competition with Yelp as a local social review site. I'm not sure if the reviews will be 2-way (publishing back to CitySearch), though I imagine they won't, as MySpace tries to build some footprint in the area. I think this makes a lot of sense for MySpace, to keep users on the site, provide them more valuable content and information to share, and CitySearch is the right partner for them. There are a lot of local content providers they could have worked with, but looking at MySpace's core demo, the categories that most YP providers focus on (home services, dentists, doctors, etc) are not as relevant as Restaurants and Entertainment, which are CitySearch's focus. It will be interesting to watch what happens with this, but it could be really successful.

MySpace and Citysearch Team Up to Challenge Yelp

SuperPages Advertising SuperGuarantee Everywhere

A couple days ago, on his blog, Greg Sterling showed one of the new TV ads that Idearc has debuted. Today, in a story completely unrelated to local and YPs, TechCrunch posts a huge screenshot talking about how instant messaging service Meebo has turned their entire wallpaper into an ad. And who bought that ad space? SuperPages, to promote their SuperGuarantee product. Apparently, they are seeing that as the growth engine for their company, or at least a tool they can use to differentiate themselves for branding and advertising purposes. As I said before, I doubt any percentage of their users will register for this, send a lead form for it, or collect money on it, but they are at least being very aggressive trying to get the message out there.



Meebo Turns Into One Big Ad, But Users Seem To Like It

DexKnows launches Mobile Platform

DexKnows rolled out their mobile platform yesterday, allowing consumers to add DexKnows People and Business search to a variety of mobile platforms, including traditional cel phones, a mobile browser, text message search and of course, an iPhone app (which is the only one I've tried). The iPhone app looks like it has all the basic functions and works fairly well, allowing you to easily search for businesses or people by name and providing a somewhat fun, wheel-based ability to select your category (within Food, Entertainment or Travel/Transportation), combine that with a geo location (of which you can save multiple, which I haven't seen before in an iPhone local app), and get results for that combination. It has the other standard features as well, like saving businesses and returning to previous profiles viewed. All in all, a fairly solid app that covers the basics. It would be great for them to add some interactivity to the next version, allowing users to upload business data, reviews and images, to really utilize the iPhone as a 2-way device.

Dex® Mobile

Business.com Goes Local

Over the weekend, Business.com rolled out a redesign of their site. As part of it, they've integrated listings from their sister site, DexKnows.com. Now, on pretty much every directory page on their site, they've added a "Local Search" widget, which allows you to take their national listings and filter them down to find local vendors.

Merchant Accounts | Business.com

Yelp's Entering Dangerous Territory

(image from the East Bay Express)

I posted a while ago about the issues with reviews and the things you have to concern yourself with in the generation of that kind of content. In the local space, Yelp is definitely the leader in review content, but a while back they had an article written about them (more than one actually) indicating that they basically engage in extortion, offering to remove bad reviews only if advertisers pay them and removing good reviews for those who don't.

After that initial wave of stories came out, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman came out and vehemently denied them. He posted on their blog and stated they were outright lies. However, the stories didn't stop coming and now a new story has been posted (by the same person writing the original one) naming names of businesses that received this treatment and going into a lot of detail about these practices (even naming salespeople). I have no idea whether this is true or not, but even allegations of impropriety like this can permanently damage a business. Stoppelman really needs to come forward and, if this is true, needs to be clear about it, make a mea culpa, and outline how they are going to make sure it doesn't happen again. If it isn't true, he needs to go open kimono and show the world just how their process works, so he once and for all disproves this before it gains (additional) life of its own. It may not be the best option, but this could go downhill quickly.

East Bay Express | News | Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up

Local Conferences - Kelsey Marketplaces Show

I've spent the last 3 days at the Kelsey Marketplaces Show in LA and have to say I've come away very impressed with a lot of the companies on show and what they were doing (and the success they're having with them).  As Kelsey said on their blog, even in the current environment, everyone is very optimistic and there's tons of room to grow in the Vertical space.

A few companies jumped out at me from the discussions:

• AutoTrader - They have a very traditional business model (paid inclusion with 2 flavors), but execute it so well that they have grown over 20% YOY, and were a $650 MM business last year.  This one shows me that if stay focused on one specific area, in a large market space, you can be very successful.  What they haven't done is dilute their message by selling 10 different products, but have sold one that works for both users and advertisers and also gives them comprehensive data to share with other sites

• Dotmenu - Dotmenu has done something very different in their space.  While many local companies stay away from Restaurants because of their traditional lack of advertising spend (in YP, etc), Dotmenu is not only pursuing that category, but pursuing low-end and mid-level restaurants that their competitors like OpenTable won't touch.  Through their Allmenus site, they have focused on digitizing print data (menus) and developing comprehensiveness, making them the place to go for that info (also, unlike others in this space, they haven't just posted menu scans, but have formatted data that search engines can read).  They also have a college site that helps utilized those focused markets, where users are especially likely to interact with social components of their site, both online and on mobile devices.  But the real wow for me was how they are getting inside the transaction.  While their sites initially serve as marketing, for many restaurants, they will actually take orders and collect money on behalf of the restaurants.  They then deduct the advertising spend from the money collected and end up paying restaurants at the end of the month, rather than billing them, meaning no collections issues, while at the same time taking what had been a lead business and making it transactional.

• TeachStreet - To me, this was the #1 wow company of the conference.  TeachStreet focuses on non-degree learning/classes (things like cooking, dancing, art, etc).  They have taken an interesting approach to this multi-billion dollar market.  The first step is that they determine a market to enter and have an offshore team scanning all the sites in that market to collect information on businesses and instructors, and classes available.  They create pages for each of these and are focused on comprehensiveness of data.  However, rather than creating a walled garden for that data, they are clearly focused on making it as open as possible.  How can they do this?  Because in my view, they are focused on being a platform for these businesses, helping businesses market themselves, schedule classes and collect money.  So they are making themselves part of the transaction, regardless of where the user comes from on the Internet.  This also makes it easy for individual instructors to set out on their own and make money outside of the school they work in, giving them more revenue and potentially lower prices for buyers.  Finally, looking at their website, they are making the smart move of encouraging their instructors to create content for their site, both adding value for users and SEO traffic.

There were several other impressive companies, among them the Active Network (up to $250MM in revenues with 3000 employees with plenty more growth to come - most interestingly they get a lot of their revenue from large brands) and Oodle, who really is taking the lead in classifieds aggregation and sounds like they really understand how to interact in the new, social world on the Internet.

All in all, this has been a great conference, interesting seminars and the ability to interact with the decision makers from a lot of great local/vertical companies.

Even in a Recession, You Can't Afford to Pass on Social Media

It's a recession, and a lot of companies are looking to cut back on Marketing spend. However, a new Forrester study says that, even in this economy, more than 50% of companies are increasing their spend on social media. This makes a lot of sense. Social media is fairly cheap to invest in and provides inexpensive content for your site. And, in a good scenario, it can create an ongoing content creation machine that can power your site far more cheaply and effectively than paid media.

In the local space, many of the traditional YP companies have been slow to adopt social media (in fact, some might say they haven't adopted it at all, with the exception of Reviews and Social Bookmarking). Instead, they are allowing insurgents like Yelp and Angie's List to take the lead on that, and as a result, those companies are gaining quickly. YP companies, and others in the local space who have yet to adopt social media, must look on it as an integral part of their content and traffic strategies and move forward now, not just integrating reviews, but other basic social features, such Commenting, Topic Forums, Local Content creation and more. If not, the Yelps of the world will no longer be the insurgents, they'll be the incumbents.

Despite Recession, More Than 50% of Marketers Increase Spending on Social Media - ReadWriteWeb

Idearc Results Follow In Line with RHD's - What's Next?

Idearc has reported their results just days after RHD's, and the reports are very similar. They are both shrinking in revenues and profits (but both still with significant Operating Profits), but both have debt that will never be paid off at the current revenue and profit levels. As their businesses move online more and more, their Internet revenues are not making up for print revenue losses. They're both trapped in the space where they don't want to cannibalize their print revenue too much while they still have it, but are lagging on the Internet side for the same reason?

So what happens next? They have both mentioned bankruptcy, which is a realistic discussion because of the size of their debt and the current market for debt restructuring. The real question is will they really go bankrupt or is this a negotiating ploy? Or does it make a difference? In reality, neither of these companies is going to close the doors. The operating profits are still healthy and selling their assets will bring much less money to the debtholders than continued operation will. So, whether they go bankrupt or not, the only option seems to be for the debtholders to agree to forgive some of their debt, to allow the companies to continue to operate, and to be thankful they're getting paid whatever they get. Whether that happens in bankruptcy or not may be moot.

Of course, there's one more option too: Consolidation. YPC seems to be fairly healthy and could make an aggressive move to take an even larger lead, get national coverage, and try to take the dominant position in local, both on and offline. They already have a deal with Idearc to exchange listings. Could that be the first step?

Kelsey Group Blogs » Idearc Results Are Predictably Grim; Bankruptcy an Option

LocalPrice.com - Comparison Shopping for Local Goods and Services

There are a lot of companies out there to provide you contact with local service providers (ServiceMagic, the new Sears site, etc). Most of those have a similar model, though: Tell us what you want and give us your information and we'll give it to a bunch of people who will respond and you can take it from there. Those are good solutions if you're looking for a provider who can service your needs, but it definitely does not provide you much information about the person contacting you, pricing, etc. And in some of those situations, having less information that the person you're dealing with can really hurt you.

So today on Screenwerk, I saw an article about LocalPrice.com, a new company that's taking a new approach on things. They are currently only in Atlanta, but have a really interesting value proposition: They provide you information to compare local products or services up-front. Their model is more similar to a shopping engine model, and gives you a lot more information about the person you'll be contacting, pricing, etc. This really allows you to make a more educated decision and probably save yourself some money in the meantime. Their model depends on a lot of high-quality structed content, which is really going to be the bottleneck in their system (which is why its a good idea for them to focus on their starting market, Atlanta, before trying to expand too quickly), but that's also the strength of the system. It will be interesting to see how things go for them.

Price Comparisons of Atlanta Service Providers | LocalPrice.com