NYT hands off hyperlocal experiment to Baristanet
The New York Times announced today that it’s bringing its hyperlocal experiment in New Jersey to an end. But instead of abandoning “The Local” site covering Maplewood, Millburn and South Orange, the NYT will redirect the traffic to the New Jersey hyperlocal site Baristanet, which will be expanding its coverage area to encompass the three [...]
Mashable declares today ‘Social Media Day’
Mashable has declared today “Social Media Day,” and who are we to argue? The popular site is celebrating with more than 600 meetups around the world. Mashable is livestreaming a bunch of the gatherings at so be sure to check in if you can’t make it in person. I’ll be on a panel at the [...]
Foursquare nets $20 million in venture capital
Foursquare will have a lot more money to play with. The New York Times reports the location-based social network has raised an additional $20 million in venture capital money, adding big time to its previous $1.35 million funding. The company is now valued at almost $100 million. Among the new investors is Andreessen Horowitz, the [...]
Local TV’s Top Twitterers
LR Pal Mike Malone at B&C has a list of the top Twitterers in local TV news. Leading the charge, of course, is our fave rave Amy Wood (@TVAmy) at WSPA in Spartanburg. (Confession/Disclosure: Amy was a client.) Amy uses social media smartly, connecting with her audience and keeping in touch throughout the day. You [...]
Digital Newsstands Heading to New York City
Courtesy of DailyDOOH.com A team of companies from the digital out-of-home media industry have come together to make digital newsstands in New York City a reality. Led by CEMUSA, the international outdoor advertising company that beat out competitors JCDecaux and Viacom to win New York’s $1.4 billion street furniture contract in 2005, the innovative newsstand effort utilizes a [...]
Groupon, friend or competitor of local blogs?
When it comes to driving people through the front door of local businesses, Groupon is a force — offering tantalizing deals from local restaurants, spas, shops and more. And now Groupon and some of its competitors are beginning to reach out to neighborhood blogs to encourage them to become distribution partners. Groupon, for example, has [...]
Msnbc redesign focuses on content, not page views
Msnbc.com’s new look, teased back on June 11, is now live and takes a significantly different approach to news – one we find considerably encouraging. The msnbc story pages now feature all the information “right there” rather than forcing you to jump hoops to get a certain item of information from the story. Each story [...]
Why top media companies are adding mobile jobs
We’re finally seeing some mobile-specific jobs being created in digital newsrooms, and this is a welcome trend. According to Poynter Online, CNN, The Orlando Sentinel and Philly.com have all added jobs strictly for mobile work within the past year. Is your newsroom considering a mobile-first hire? We’ve seen the explosive growth in the mobile market. [...]
Spartanburg Spark declares itself “3.0″
The local, online-only Spartanburg Spark has added a bunch of new features and has a new look. In an entry called “The Spark Goes Web 3.0,” the site details some of its many new features: We now have the ability to let users create and join groups around their interests, as well as have their [...]
Ticker Free Day: Fighting Digital Signage Ticker Abuse #tickerfree2010
Stock tickers, RSS tickers, breaking news tickers, and their streaming brethren crowd digital screens across the world. With each horizontal pass, tickers strangle digital content. I came up with an idea that I want to share with the Lost Remote community; an idea so revolutionary that it could change the world forever! (not really, but it could [...]
Social networks to take bite out of local ads
If you sell local advertising, a study from Borrell Associated released today should catch your eye. Borrell predicts that marketing spending on social networks will skyrocket 68% this year, making up about 11 cents of every marketing dollar spent online. In five years, Borrell predicts the number will hit $38 billion — a full third [...]
New content providers: Friend, enemy or frenemy?
Some people call them the 5th estate. Others call them content mills or content farms. Whatever you call them, new content providers are a force to be reckoned with. For example, Demand Media is now working with Gannett and Hearst. Yahoo recently purchased Associated Content to bolster its newly aggressive local strategy. And Examiner.com is [...]
5 reasons why California’s digital license plate ad network will never materialize
Major technology news came out of the state of California on Monday. A sitting U.S. Senator is backing a digital initiative that would impact every driver registered in California. When I first read about it, I legitimately thought it was a ruse; a belated April Fools joke courtesy of the state that appointed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor. After [...]
TBD.com announces first blog partners
The highly-anticipated DC news startup, TBD.com, announced today it’s first wave of local blog partners, with more to come. Among the sites are ARLNow.com, RockvilleCentral.com and WeLoveDC.com. “When we launch, you’ll see posts from the following blogs highlighted on TBD.com,” explains the TBD blog. “We’re happy to have them and hope that you’ll become fans [...]
Media partnership auction site ‘boocoo’ launches today
There’s a new auction site on the block (as it were), and it’s a partnership that includes more than 300 newspapers and TV stations. The site, boocoo, opened for business today, taking on eBay, in an effort to make up ad money losses. What makes boocoo different from other auction sites? For one, slightly lower [...]
Some Groupon buyers ‘addicted,’ not redeeming coupons
Yes, there’s a dark side to Groupon. For one, we’ve heard reports of overselling and the difficulty retailers have had fulfilling their stampede of Groupon hordes. There’s another issue we’re reading about in today’s Boston Metro: Groupon “addicts.” People are making impulse buys off Groupon, and some aren’t cashing in on their deals. As one [...]
Great Knight News Challenge coverage over at Nieman
We know good coverage when we see it: the LR pals over at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard (enough with the “cah” jokes, please) have been providing great, in-depth reporting on the winners of the Knight News Challenge. Today, they provide a look at Go Map Riga, winner of a $250,000 grant. What is [...]
Facebook places coming soon
Twitter is rolling out “Twitter Places” powered in part by a deal with Localeze, and now TechCrunch is reporting Facebook has inked its own Localeze deal. “Essentially, what we’re hearing is that Facebook will use this data to populate some new kind of fan pages for places, that businesses will be able to then claim [...]
YouTube working on local news effort in SF
Back in November, YouTube launched YouTube Direct, which allows publishers to embed the YouTube upload functionality directly in their sites. (See how WHDH TV in Boston used it to encourage video uploads from users right here.) Now’s there’s word that YouTube is working on a new local news effort around YouTube Direct with an unnamed [...]
Is ‘blog’ a four-letter word?
Does the word “blog” have an irreversibly bad connotation? We’ve had the debate rise up here, and it’s time to discuss. In Cory Bergman’s post “Blogger said Patch tried to poach him away,” the person in question, Timothy Rutt wrote: “We’re a news site with a blogging format, and one of my regrets was putting [...]
