Media Transparent

The elevation of standards in local marketing imagery is creating new opportunities for local professional photographers, above and beyond events like weddings and school pictures. A year and a half ago in September 2010, MacUser’s Dave Stevenson lamented the “Tragic Demise of the Professional Photographer,” suggesting that photographers were being disintermediated by online stock libraries [...]

The default local community bulletin board of Web 1.0 was Craigslist. The second generation, including Topix and Outside.In (now a part of AOL), pioneered hyperlocal news aggregation to construct a feed-based local newspaper — but these companies’ main challenge has been to nurture local conversations around news. Topix in particular has been able to develop active forums at a [...]

Although Patch is growing its reader base, the company still seems to be struggling with thetraditional banner ad based business modelfor three simple reasons: 1) lower local demand for banner ads due to new marketing options like daily deals, social media and SEO marketing, 2) limited readership for publications serving small local markets, and 3) outsize [...]

Last month, Pew Internet published a media study on “How People Learn about their Community”. After the weather, breaking news – a real time ticker tape amalgam of Arab leaders being overthrown, earthquakes, sports scores, murders and accidents – comprise what locals look for. So what do people look for in local news? It’s pretty mundane. Local [...]

Yes, BIA/Kelsey’s survey says 48% of SMBs are on Facebook. However, the more telling implication of the above chart is how SMBs don’t even use marketing methods that have been around for a while (43% on email?) or are well recognized as effective (22% with blogs, most likely abandoned). At Street Fight Summit last month, [...]

Now that Google+ is bonafide, get the widget at widgetsplus.com

Groupon is now offering topic specific deals, and unveiled its first real estate deal last Friday with a $25 coupon redeemable for $1,000 cash at transaction closing. With over 163 sold over four days of a one week deal, Groupon validated the concept that home buyers and sellers will pay a nominal fee of $25 [...]

Groupon-like deals can work for real estate, but not as a typical $10 for $20 worth of product purchase. Real estate can’t be sold as a 30% off purchase price item (although they certainly tried variations of this at California real estate investment clubs in 2005). Real estate marketing has generally relied on variations of [...]

Social commerce won’t be just the playground of Internet giants Groupon, Google and Facebook. White label social commerce platform providers will allow any publishing entrepreneur to easily build social buying applications. In my previous post, I discussed how the success of social commerce hinges on media distribution – how to get social deals noticed by [...]

This article originally appeared at Daily Deal Media. I supplemented the original article with new projections for daily deal revenue growth from investment firm Needham & Co. The term “social commerce” was rarely discussed until Groupon’s massive 1/2 off coupon they sold for the Gap: Social media provided everybody with a voice. Social media however [...]