Articles of the Day
Marchex: Phone-Based Lead Gen Is Key For Smaller Businesses — There’s a reason that venture capitalists pumped nearly $70 million in financing into local online advertising firms like ReachLocal and Yodle late last year. Their business models, which include paid and organic search optimization, Internet yellow page management and phone-based lead generation, are the magic mix that small and medium businesses (SMBs) need to be successful in the age of Web 2.0, according to a new report by Marchex. First, there are more players stepping up to the plate to help SMBs market themselves online–and that the increased agency competition is driving innovation in terms of their technology and service offerings.
LinkedIn Partners With BusinessWeek To Launch Company Profiles — LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, has launched profiles of more than 160,000 companies to help members land jobs and climb the corporate ladder. Unlike company or brand pages on MySpace or Facebook, LinkedIn’s profiles aren’t created by companies themselves as online marketing vehicles. Instead, they combine basic corporate information provided by BusinessWeek with LinkedIn’s own data from members who work at the companies profiled. That includes things like a list of company employees within a member’s circle on LinkedIn, new hires and recent promotions (members who recently joined a given company or have been promoted within), and a list of executives who have the most profile views at their companies.
Forbes To Launch Ad Network — Forbes announced today that it will start selling ads this spring for about 400 financial blogs, according to The Associated Press. “The folks at Forbes really understood our business,” said Steve Woit, publisher of Xconomy, a blog joining the Forbes network, according to The AP. “A larger network, whether it’s Google or others, has to deal with every industry and large consumer sites.”
AccuWeather Partners With Opera Software For Link To Mobile Web Site — AccuWeather has partnered with Opera Software to offer a direct link from the Opera Mini start page to AccuWeather.com’s top ten mobile Web site. The Opera Mini browser works on almost every mobile phone–even ordinary feature phones–while providing a Web experience similar to ordinary PC browsing. Opera Mini has more than 35 million cumulative users. The Opera Mini home page offers a link directly to AccuWeather.com, recently rated a top-ten mobile Web site by M: Metrics and easily one of the most popular sources for weather information on the mobile Web. The AccuWeather.com mobile Web site offers free, ad-supported content such as radar and satellite images and local 10-day forecasts and current conditions.
Wikimedia Seeking New Ways to Generate Revenue — Wikipedia is one of the 10 most popular Web sites in the U.S., but it makes almost no money. In fact, all the money that the community-edited encyclopedia makes comes from donations-a great irony when you consider the company Wikipedia keeps as one of the most visited Web destinations: Amazon, News Corp., Yahoo, Google, etc. It comes as little surprise, then, that Wikipedia, more mature now, has started to look longingly at the success of its neighbors. Right now, the Wikimedia Foundation, the encyclopedia’s parent, is pondering a number of changes to the site to help bring in revenue; among them is selling advertising. As Wikipedia founder and chairman Jimmy Wales says, the Web firm’s bureaucratic system and structure has strengths and weaknesses. “The strength is, we don’t do anything randomly, without lots and lots of lots of discussion,” he says. “The downside is we don’t get anything done unless we actually come to a conclusion.” Wikimedia’s financial situation isn’t all that bad: the company raked in $2.2 million in cash contributions last year, up from $1.3 million in 2006. Meanwhile, the foundation’s budget this year is $4.6 million.
Alibaba Considers Yahoo Stake Purchase — Alibaba’s leadership is considering buying back Yahoo!’s (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) 39% stake in the Chinese portal because it fears a Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) takeover, according to news reports. That asset is significant to Yahoo!. In a financial report released Tuesday, Yahoo! valued its stake in Alibaba.com, the Chinese portal’s publicly traded business-to-business marketplace, at $3.2 billion, or $2.25 per share. So would losing Alibaba dampen Microsoft’s enthusiasm for buying Yahoo!–or cause it to drop its offering price? Nope, say analysts. Microsoft is too focused on competing with Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) in the mainstream advertising markets to get discouraged now. “The Asian footprint is important, but it’s a ‘nice-to-have’ for Microsoft and not the main reason to buy Yahoo!,” Morningstar analyst Larry Witt says.
IMedix: Health Search With Social Edge — IMedix is a service that blends a robust health search engine with a social network. For example, a user searching for “diabetes” will find a sidebar alongside the standard results, featuring members that are interested in the subject and willing to talk about it. “This takes advantage of some big psychological strengths in the health field–namely the need to “not be alone” when dealing with health issues,” says Rand Fishkin. “I’d imagine that iMedix’s community is held together by stronger bonds than most, and that, potentially, gives them a powerful edge.”
