The local search/directory reached a record 11.6 million unique visitors in January, reports the company. And Local.com also plans to expand its direct sales efforts by outsourcing call centers. Borrell reported last month that Local.com grew revenues 136 percent in 2007. Similar to Google but on a smaller, but significant scale, Local.com is making a concerted and successful push to reach small to mid-sized businesses. Yes, this is the business local media should be in, too.
The pitch on Local.com’s site for local business advertisers.
CNN.com sent us its Super Tuesday stats: 97 million page views, 11.9 million unique visits (both are new records since CNN.com relaunched on July 1st), 600,000 live streams and a total of 2.7 million video streams served. CNN.com’s blog Political Ticker generated just over 1 million page views. On air, CNN beat Fox News and MSNBC in both total viewers and the demo.
The Spokane, WA area has been pounded by snow - with mountains of plowed snow popping up everywhere. So the folks at the Spokesman Review newspaper launched a cool Google Maps mashup that allows people to ask for — and offer — their help.
This is fascinating. The team at Fox Chicago wondered what it would be like if users were able to see the same live satellite feeds as they see at the station. So they built LiveNewsCameras.com — a compilation of Fox affiliate feeds across the country. The site even has a live moderator, Kat Bockli, who explains what’s happening and what’s coming up. And they’re sending out text alerts of upcoming events via Twitter, which is integrated into the right column. “We are aggregating all the live feeds we can get,” said News Director Andrew Finlayson. “We think of this as an experiment on many levels.” It’s a “terrific concept,” explains Anthony Moor, who punched up the site during Super Tuesday. “And they did it in three weeks.”
Despite a little trouble loading in the early hours, MSNBC.com’s “Super Dashboard” has proven to be a terrific way to follow the election results: a live stream of MSNBC wrapped with continuously-updated election results.
I watched a few minutes of WashingtonPost.com’s live streaming coverage of Super Tuesday results. Well, it’s not TV, that’s for sure. No flashy sets or graphics. No live shots from the field that I saw (although there were phoners, and they took candidate speeches live.) Just lots of analysis. As the Post promised, the goal was to “put breaking news in perspective.” Not exactly engaging viewing by TV standards (which was probably the point), and I applaud them for offering an alternative for their users.
Update: A few innovative uses of technology to watch tonight…
- In a first for a major paper, WashingtonPost.com and Newsweek are offering streaming live coverage with live chat, from 6 p.m. ET to midnight. “We’re very excited by the prospect of doing something new,” said Anchor Jon Meacham, Editor of Newsweek. “We’ll be drawing on our team around the country to do what we do best: put breaking news in perspective.”
- MTV’s “Choose or Lose” street teams — 23 reporters in 23 states — are providing a mixture of blogging, video clips and even live shots powered by Nokia N95’s and FlixWagon. Click on the reporters on the map (see the “live now” and “new post” tags). Very slick. (Screen grab below.)
- ABC News NOW’s coverage kicks off at 7 p.m. ET and will integrate video questions and comments submitted by users via the “Talk Back” site.
- Twitter has teamed with Google for a map mashup with the latest updates across the country. (Screen grab below.) New Twitters appear in real-time (Google explains the process here), and when the polls close, Google will add election results to the mix.
- Also, Politweets is aggregating all the Super Tuesday Twitters.
- Not to be left out, YouTube has it’s own Google Maps mashup, which combines video submissions from YouTubers, participating media organizations and even the candidates. (Screen grab below).
- MSNBC.com is offering embeddable widgets for bloggers. Beyond the “Candidates + Issues Matrix,” MSNBC.com just added the Elections ‘08 Leaderboard — an updated delegate count for the candidates.
- Clear Channel has teamed with NBC News and MSNBC.com to display real-time results on electronic billboards located in Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, Memphis and Albuquerque.
- CNN will bring out the “Magic Wall” again tonight — a touch-screen that allows CNN anchors to interactively display and animate adata. “(It’s the) gee-whizziest TV-news gizmo since the animated weather map,” explains a feature in the Washington Post. (Via TVNewser)
Yahoo owns Flickr. Microsoft bids for Yahoo. Flickrites launch a photo pool called, “Microsoft: Keep Your Grubby Hands Off Our Flickr.” Gates gets Photoshopped. Hilarity ensues.
Who you calling a fad? A study by eMarketer projects exponential growth in the podcasting audience — from 18.5 million last year to 65 million in 2012 — along with a steady growth in revenue. “The revenue figures will bring a smile to any VC firm with investments in the sector,” writes TechCrunch. “Advertising in 2007 hit $165 million and is expected to grow to $435 million in 2012.”
- Hearst cooking up a magazine for the Food Network
- Murdoch praises WSJ subscription model, eyes online growth
- Karl Rove joins Fox News as political commentator
- The Industry Standard returns after the bubble… but online only
As some might expect, a record 97.5 million viewers watched the Super Bowl on Sunday. Only the “MASH” finale of ‘83, with 106 million viewers, scored a higher rating. In Boston, the Super Bowl scored a 81 percent share. In New York, the audience share was 67 percent.
Did you see the Budweiser Super Bowl ad with the guy who can breathe fire? It instantly reminded me of another very similar series of ads for a spicy burger offered by Dairy Queen.
Folks in the education sector and the military will now be able to use ESPN’s online ESPN360 live video service for free, Multi Channel News notes. Right now, about 25 ISPs participate in the subscription-only site - representing about 20 million users. ESPN wants ISPs to pay them a fee for every single subscriber so that a small percentage of the user base can use the 360 service… just like with the TV networks. Fortunately, for now at least, few providers have taken the bait.
Online users are more likely to watch TV shows online (20%) than on cable video-on-demand (14%), reveals a new survey by Solutions Research Group. Nobody would’ve guessed it five years ago, eh?
ContentBridge’s Ken Doctor raises some great questions about what a Microsoft-Yahoo deal would mean for the newspaper consortium. “How will newspapers exercise any change-of-control clause they have in the consortium contracts?” he writes. “At least some of the players have them, giving them a bit of leverage to renegotiate with Microsoft/Yahoo and/or Google.” Adds Alan Mutter, “With far bigger lines of business and more momentous issues at stake for Yahoo and a potential acquirer, it is not hard to imagine how the newspaper project could be overlooked, sidetracked, or, in the worst case, scuttled. Consequently, publishers would be well advised not to put all their eggs in Yahoo’s basket.”
Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang “to offer his company’s help in any effort to thwart Microsoft Corp.’s unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo,” reports the WSJ. Google has been outspoken that a Microsoft-Yahoo deal “raises troubling questions.” Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke to a group of analysts today and said the acquisition would help competition, not hurt it. “Google’s clearly got a dominant position. They’ve got about 75 percent of paid search worldwide,” Ballmer said. “We think this enhances competition. Anything else would be less good from that perspective.” (First link WSJ sub. req.)
Due in large part to the close game. But Akamai expects today will be a big day as people go back and watch their favorite commercials.
Update: The one exception of the day was… the GoDaddy.com spot. According to Akamai, the spike reached 1.259 million visitors per minute and was one of Akamai’s largest in the past three years.
Remember the “Digg song girl” we wrote about in December? Kina Granis came up with a clever song about Digg - which then became a little phenomenon among diggers. Her website - twoweeksfokina.com - asked users to participate in a Doritos/MySpace contest - with the top voter-getter getting a record deal and a music video aired during today’s game.
So, what do you think of the Super Bowl pregame show, the game coverage, the halftime show, the web integration and most of all… the commercials? Leave your impressions in comments below and we’ll surface a few in our coverage after the game.
Writes Chip: “It will be the highest-rated SB, dontcha think? Even higher than those great games of the 70s and 80s.”
Writes Tim: “Most of the ads were.. average, mediocre, take your pick. There was one that made me laugh.. but I can’t remember it so it wasn’t that effective, was it?”
Writes Mel: “While i think tom petty is a fine performer, i always get a kick out of how the producers of the half time show load up a bunch of screaming teens and 20-somethings in front of the stage…. the youngsters seem to be going crazy for petty. i bet most have no idea of the tunes he was playing.”
Writes Sparkles: “We tried going to the screaming stain web site right after the commercial. it didn’t work. doh!”
Writes Steve: “A four hour pregame is way too long. on the positive side - Jordan Sparks may have sung one of the best renditions on the national anthem i’ve ever heard.”
Striking writers and the major studios have reached a preliminary agreement on the key differences between the two groups, reports the LA Times. The last sticking point in the negotiations has been compensation for TV shows streamed over the internet, but it looks like both sides have come together on the issue (but no details have been released yet.). A final contract could be presented to the WGA as early as late next week.
“We wanted to let more people take a look… so we established this channel on YouTube” - Katie Couric about her new channel on the video sharing site, which right now features a series of “Primary Questions” to some of the candidates running for president. Best line from the intro video (below): “Hello YouTube viewers. You know, it’s nice to be on YouTube for a change when I know the cameras are rolling… Harry Shearer I’m going to get you! Anyways…” Of course, she’s referring to this and this.
Slate’s Jack Shafer takes MSNBC.com, CNN.com and FoxNews.com to task for their penchant to feature fluffy headlines on the cover. He found these gems (and more) in just 48 hours:
British Teen Films Herself Trying To Kill Parents
Granny Locks Boy in Cage, Says He Poisoned Her
Baby’s body, car seat found on roadside
Girls gang-raped, forced to be sex slaves
Students expelled for making out on bus
Nuns-and-nude ad upsets Catholics
Haiti’s poor resort to eating dirt
Watch that hot drink! Airline offers naked flights
Shafer has scores of examples - and calls the sites “Web tabloids.” He notes that while there’s lots of stuff about politics and the economy - he says the reliance on tabloid stories is “explicitly designed to momentarily rouse and titillate the Web audience, says worlds about how the site thinks of us. Life is a freak show, the Web sites instruct, and we viewers just another bunch of freaks.”
Who you calling a fad? A 
ContentBridge’s Ken Doctor raises some great questions about what a Microsoft-Yahoo deal would mean for the newspaper consortium. “How will newspapers exercise any change-of-control clause they have in the consortium contracts?” 
So, what do you think of the Super Bowl pregame show, the game coverage, the halftime show, the web integration and most of all… the commercials? Leave your impressions in comments below and we’ll surface a few in our coverage after the game.