I am a little bit slow posting about this news from UK based Multimap, which is now part of the Microsoft family - Multimap is now tightly tied to Live Search in the UK - which is cool! Here’s some details from the official blog:
First things first, Multimap is now the lead consumer mapping experience for Live Search in the UK, and we’re proud to welcome all the UK users of Live Search Maps to Multimap.com. It may have been a while since you last used Multimap.com, but we hope that you’ll find all the great features that you’re used to, plus much more.
For those of you not familiar with Live Search Maps, and the Virtual Earth platform that powers it, check out the fabulous Bird’s Eye images, which are now available on Multimap.com. Unlike normal satellite and aerial imagery that is taken from directly above, Bird’s Eye images are captured by low-flying aircraft and are taken from a 45 degree angle, facing north, south, east and west directions to give a unique perspective.
Read the full blog post here OR better yet use the new and improved Multimap directly. I’ve always found Multimap to be one of the best UK focused mapping sites and was always an early innovator. Its great to see that they are improving the product and taking back ground from Google maps.
This deal - Local Matters + Mobile People - will be of interest to people in the local search and IYP space. The deal had been rumoured for months now and so no surprise to see it finally announced. The combined company should be able to provide a more comprehensive solution to new and existing customers. There are no details on the value of the deal. If anyone has any info on the deal size or wants to speculate please comment… Note: Local Matters are a fairly significant partner with FAST in terms of using the FAST search platform for as a core element of LMI’s solution. It will be interesting to see how this relationship evolves once FAST is part of MSFT.
Local Matters and mobilePeople Merger Provides Unique Offering to Directory Publishers
Copenhagen/London, NN March, 2008 – Local Matters, Inc., a Denver, Colorado based Media Technology Solutions provider, and mobilePeople a/s, a Copenhagen, Denmark based local mobile search and advertising provider, have entered into a Share Purchase Agreement on March 21, 2008. Under the terms of the transaction, Local Matters will acquire all of the outstanding capital stock of Mobile People in exchange for a combination of cash and Local Matters stock. The combined company would provide directory publishers, media publishers and directory assistance providers with media technology solutions that connect consumers and advertisers across digital channels including the internet, wireless and voice.
There are now more than three billion global mobile users, and local search ranks among the top content categories that consumers utilize on their mobile phones. Publishers are increasingly extending into Internet and mobile to capture users and local advertisers.
Local Matters’ CEO Perry Evans said: “We chose mobilePeople because we believe they have the best technology to create a mobile distribution presence for publishers. Its expertise, its track record and its innovation cycles set them apart from the many other companies in this space. Our aim now is to be the preferred one-stop shop for directory publishers and directory assistance providers for outsourced media technology solutions online, on wireless and on voice.”
The two companies formed a business partnership in 2006 and have several joint initiatives in progress. The closing of the transaction is subject to additional closing conditions and is currently expected to close in the second quarter of 2008.
AOL re-org - looks like more stuff that creates opps for the likes of G, M and FIM
And this from Looksmart today - about time they got geo sorted!
LookSmart is excited to announce that Geo-Targeting is now available in the AdCenter. Login to your account now and take advantage of this new feature.
Targeting Down to the City-Level Take your LookSmart camaigns further with a spectrum of Geo-Targeting options: Country, State/Province, Metropolitan Area, and City-level targeting help you hit your desired targets.
Reporting, Regardless Whether or not you implement Geo-Targeting right away, you have the ability to see where your clicks are coming from in the AdCenter reports. Take advantage of these reports to gain valuable insight into your campaigns AND customers.
Geo-Targeting Explained Geo-Targeting is a tool that allows advertisers to focus PPC advertising campaigns on the geographic location of their desired customers. Furthermore, advertisers who focus on local advertising can buy popular, head of the query stream keywords and have them displayed exclusively in the local regions they do business in.
Here’s Google’s logo for the 1st day of spring. In London today the wather sucks, so lets hope PT is better. Have a great Easter and Happy Spring!
There was an interesting piece in the Technology Guardian section last week about 192.com images that are very very sharp and have better resolution than Google maps (currently at least). The 192 image set is London only so far. This does indeed raise privacy concers and is related to the video I posted yesterday and ties into the wider discussion around online privacy - SEL has good post here.
I have mixed feelings about this - as sharp images are useful and can even be fun, but I can see the privacy concerns. In the UK, however, most people are probably photographed or on CCTV many many times a day anyway… It would be interesting to hear other people’s views and comments on this topic - so please comment if you have time.
1st: There are two interesting posts on the use of video by SMBs (small and medium sized businesses) as way to gain better visibility and higher rankings in organic search results. The 1st post is Greg Sterling here and the 2nd on the Kelsey Group blog here. I am sure this is good news for the likes of Spot Runner and Spotzer.
2nd: Google maps has launched directions without addresses functionality - this is cool and very useful… Even works in the UK.
Lastly: While digging around on Google mapping stuff I was pointed to this funny video (below) with a privacy message.
This is a brief wrap-up of various news and stories for the past week. I’ve included a few comments.
Sun is buying MySQL - interesting news indeed. MySQL is a big piece of the backend of many Web 2.0 applications and is here to stay as a mainstream database. Maybe Google buy Sun one of these days?
Google acts fast with a MSFT smackdown move in the enterprise search space and there is more commnet on this here at CMS. This relates to the MSFT FAST deal from last week. Google is definitely being a bit cheeky on this sales effort. Apparently they are even offering a free spa day to customers?! See below, I think the person who sent this to me toke some poetic license on the last line…
Offer details To make it easy for you to switch, we’re offering existing enterprise search customers some exciting benefits when they replace their existing solution with a Google Search Appliance by March 31st, 2008. You can choose from one of the following options:
· FREE website search.
· FREE training.
· FREE jumpstart package.
· Spa Day at Googleplex – Alleviate all your worries and come enjoy a paid trip to sunny California, including round trip airfare, hotel, a gourmet lunch from our 5 star chefs, and, of course, one full hour of massage therapy. OK, we’re just kidding about this whole Spa Day at Google, but we know the recent events will only represent more work and stress for you. We’re here to help!
Semantic Wave 2008 Report - free interesting report available to RWW readers. Worth getting this if you have time.
Xobni launched its beta last week - thanks to my buddy at Razorshine for pointing me to this new app. I’ve got to get it next week when I move back to Outlook for my work emails.
Last night I attended the mashup event here in London and the theme was ‘local.’ First off I applaud the organisers of the mashup events for continuing to put together these generally very good events. The mashup events are filling a useful niche in the London online business community. So, please keep organising the mashups… However, last night’s event was very much ‘local search 101′ and I didn’t find it particularly valuable (that’s my view anyway). What I did notice was the significant number of investor types lurking around. I’ve got to think there isn’t much room for any more local Web2.0 start-ups - at least not in the UK. There are too many. There is too much local UGC that’s just not user friendly (more on this in thread in a future post). So a note to Investors: before you invest anything in the local space, contact me first I’ve got some valuable insight to share (I mean sell you).
This is an interesting Microsoft is acquiring UK based web mapping provider Multimap. I have to think this helps MSFT build out further relationships with many on-line publishers. Plus Multimap could also be a potential source of local advertising inventory for MSFT in the near future. There appear that so far the value of the deal has not be annouced. Below is the main body of the PR:
Microsoft Acquires One of Europe’s Top Online Map Services
12 December 2007
Acquisition of Multimap will help Microsoft deliver new, expanded services on the Web
Microsoft Corp. has acquired Multimap, one of the United Kingdom’s top 100 technology companies and one of the leading online mapping services in the world. The acquisition gives Microsoft a powerful new location and mapping technology to complement existing offerings such as Virtual Earth, Live Search, Windows Live services, MSN and the aQuantive advertising platform, with future integration potential for a range of other Microsoft products and platforms. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“The addition of Multimap enhances Microsoft’s position as a leading provider of mapping and location platform services,” said Sharon Baylay, general manager of the Online Services Group at Microsoft. “This acquisition will play a significant role in the future growth of our search business and presents a huge opportunity to expand our platform business beyond the U.K. and globally. We are thrilled to welcome Multimap onboard.”
One of the best-known online mapping companies worldwide, Multimap provides a publicly available personal mapping service at http://www.multimap.com, as well as a range of integrated business services.
“Partnering with Microsoft gives us a world of new opportunities to build our mapping services into new technologies and applications,” said Jeff Kelisky, CEO of Multimap. “As one of the world’s foremost technology brands, Microsoft is in a position to bring even more value to the Multimap service and give people everywhere new, exciting and fun ways to get from point A to point B.”
Multimap will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, as part of the Virtual Earth and Search teams in the Online Services Group. The acquisition is the latest in a series of moves as Microsoft seeks to expand its online services to deliver software, services, and premium content and applications to consumers and businesses.
I’ve been following some of the reports and post from the Kelsey Group’s Interactive Local Media: 07 conference being held out in LA this week. The Local Onliner, Screenwerk and Praized should give you a good flavor of the event.
The Kelsey Group Conferences are high quality and always worthwhile. They are great for business, learning and networking. However, I was reading this post on Screenwerk and it struck a cord with me. I’ve been to a few ILM and other TKG conferences over the past few years but agree that perhaps more on how than why would be good. As someone who has grown up online (vs. coming from a more traditional or offline publishing background) I would even push that statement a little further and say there needs to be more detail into what is working, what is not working and what are the challenges in the local space.
So, I had a thought that maybe it’s the size of the event? I mean no disrespect – TKG events are premier conferences, please attend if you can. However, a bit like social networking (ie, once to big or to general, people look for smaller more elite networks etc) maybe some smaller or even off the radar events are where more in depth and serious discussions are happening and the firmament is starting to brew up some new ideas and innovations? I am sure many of the offline discussions and smaller side meetings at ILM are truly interesting.
I am helping to organize a small but high caliber Local Search Summit here in Europe next week. This will be the 2nd event this year (the 1st one was in Munich in April, perfect place great weather and of course beer gardens) and so far they have been largely self organizing. I can’t list the participants at the moment, but can tell you we are meeting in another city famous for beer and that we have 7 top tier publishing groups joining.
The groups attending are generally multi-national and diversified in terms of owning yellow pages, newspapers, classifieds, TV, radio, online and mobile properties. The geographic coverage is more than 20 countries in EMEA and Asia-Pac. The unifying theme is all these companies are committed to online/digital and are using local search to help drive and unify their online strategy. Here is a draft list of topics to be discussed (below) and as you can see there is a significant focus on advertising.
Local Search Summit – draft agenda:
Local Advertising: what’s working and what’s a challenge
Advertising: the network oppportunity, ad exchanges vs. ad marketplaces
The future with mobile and pay-per-call
SEM Platforms for Local Media
Mapping
Semantic Search and Contextual Search
Local audience. Global language. How Search is extracting context out of confusion.
The role of directory companies in local search
The impact of UGC and social networking on Local Search
I will report back from the Summit with some observations and hopefully some new insights in mid-December…
I’ve been meaning to do a post about the Google Maps Stickers that have been spotted in London for awhile now. The stickers started popping up back in early 2007 and it is not clear if the marketing program is on-going or was just a trial.
If anyone has any information about the Google Maps Sticker program please let me know!
In my neighbourhood in London, Herne Hill, there are only a handful of shops that I have seen that are displaying the stickers. I should go out do a proper count one of these days, but I estimate that around 10% of shops in total display the stickers.
I like the stickers. I also think it could be a really good marketing program for Google.
My initial reaction on seeing the Google stickers was ‘cool’ – now I know I can easily find info and a map to that business online. As someone working in the online advertising and search space I immediately thought GOOG vs. IYP. This obviously reinforces to consumers to look at Google Maps.
I think the “fingers walking” is a bit tired and that the Google map pin icon is wired. What do you think?
