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My 2 featured articles for the week ending Oct. 13, 2006:

Archived blogs for the week of Oct. 9, 2006

1249 - Oct. 12, 2006 - 10.09 AM EST

Yellow Pages and SuperPages top Local Search

Here are comScore’s recent breakdown of Internet Yellow Pages share of the overall market:

Total Yellow Pages Search at 100.0 percent

Yahoo Sites — 23.9 percent
Verizon SuperPages — 20.1 percent
Google Sites –12.5 percent
YellowPages.com –12.0 percent
Time Warner Network –7.7 percent
Local.com –5.9 percent
InfoSpace Network –5.1 percent
DexOnline.com –4.1 percent

Overall, Hitwise or Nielsen might have different numbers at this time. We will know more soon.

comScore says that about 33 percent of local search is coming through Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) sites, which are traditionally stronger leads, than the two-thirds that are coming from the major search engines.

Perhaps more interesting is that there’s apparently substantial overlap in the audiences doing searches on Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask.com and those using IYP sites.

Overall, comScore says that about 63 percent of the U.S. market searching population conducted a local search in July 2006, or approx. 105 million users. That’s a combined audience of IYP and search engine users looking for local information, using comScore’s definition of “local search.”

Posted on Businessblog™

1248 - Oct. 11, 2006 - 4.52 PM EST

Google's new Docs & Spreadsheets application

Today Google launched its new Docs and Spreadsheets service at http://docs.google.com. Google's new service integrates the previously separate Writely and Spreadsheet services into just one control panel and admin area.

Note that the previous two sites for those services redirect to http://docs.google.com. Google's new combo service shows all of a user’s Writely and spreadsheet documents all in a single list.

However, overall integration dosen't go any further than this at this point in time. The two interfaces and their various features have been mirrored in an effort to provide a consistent user experience.

For example, Private Messaging (previously only available on the old spreadsheet product) is now available when working on a Docs (Writely) document as well. Brillant by its absence is the ability to easily embed spreadsheets directly into Writely documents, a feature already offered by Zoho.

Zoho has been rapidly updating its own office suite, while Google still tells us this feature will be coming soon.

Overall, Google is rather straightforward in its goal at improving collaboration and sharing of newly-created documents, while agreeing that desktop office applications will continue to offer superior editing features.

No matter how you look at it, the ability to import and collaborate on any given document, and then to be able to publish it to the Internet or take it back to your own desktop is a very powerful feature not available to Microsoft Office users outside of Office Live or Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server.

Posted on Businessblog™

1247 - Oct. 10, 2006 - 4.31 PM EST

MSN Live and Ingenio to offer pay-per-call listings

Microsoft has inked a deal with Ingenio to offer pay-per-call listings into Mobile Live Search. However, unlike the other two programs already offered, this isn't being launched in any beta version.

Overall, Ingenio's advertisers are the only paid listings that will appear when users conduct a geotargeted search on Windows Live for mobile.

Only one advertiser will show for any given search and Ingenio's entire inventory will be funneled into Windows Live.

When there are no relevant Ingenio ads available, no sponsored listings will appear. Ingenio already has existing mobile distribution deals through Jingle Networks' 1-800-Free-411 and go2.com.

Since Ingenio announced its first deal with AOL over a year ago, it has been steadily building distribution channels with smaller players in the local market.

This is obviously a very important relationship and could be a prelude to an even broader deal with Microsoft.

Posted on Businessblog™

1246 - Oct. 9, 2006 - 4.23 PM EST

Google finalizes its YouTube acquisition

Yesterday, Google has confirmed that it is acquiring YouTube, a consumer media organization where users can view and share original videos through an Internet experience.

Google's acquisition was done for $1.65 billion in a stock-only transaction. Following this acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and its growing community.

Google's new acquisition combines one of the largest and fastest growing online video entertainment communities with Google's expertise in organizing information and creating new models for advertising on the Web.

The two combined companies will focus on providing a better, more comprehensive experience for users interested in uploading, watching and sharing videos, and will offer new opportunities for professional content owners to distribute their work to reach a greater and newer audience.

"The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google.

"Overall, our companies share similar values. We always put our users first and are committed in innovating to further improve their experience. Together, we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to our users, content owners and advertisers as a whole."

"Our community has played a vital role in transforming the way that people consume media, creating a new clip culture. By joining forces with Google, we can benefit from its global reach and technology leadership to deliver a more comprehensive entertainment experience for our users and to create new opportunities for our partners," said Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2006. All rights reserved.

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