Alert Blog Reviews

Search marketers are always interested in local marketing and search. It’s where the rubber meets the road for many businesses including the enterprise (i.e. big box stores) whose real representation of their brand is the local store that someone goes into to buy products. If the local experience is bad then the brand is bad in many consumers’ eyes. So getting down to the local level is critical for marketers especially in the age of continuing social media adoption and influence. Now there is local and there is hyperlocal. Hyperlocal is just as it implies it is getting down to the street level for reporting of local news and events. Noted hyperlocal blogger Matt McGee of hyperlocalblogger.com says this Hyperlocal blogging is writing about the streets where you live. It’s blogging about local news, local events, local businesses — anything that’s happening in your hometown, city, street, or neighborhood. Hyperlocal blogs often talk about things that traditional media ignores, the stuff that’s too small or not important enough to a wide range of people. Well, it appears that what traditional media ignores the VC and M & A crowd are finding interesting. According to theDeal.com While newspapers have been decimated by the economics transforming today’s media industry, Web sites that report news and deliver other content at the neighborhood, or “hyperlocal,” level, are bursting with life, with many of them becoming sought-after targets by big media and big tech companies. It is getting harder to ignore the concentration on the local level that is becoming one of the most important elements for B2C and some B2B online business success. The sound and fury around the mobile market with Google and Apple squaring off is just as much about local search as it is a device. The mobile device and its growth is perfectly suited for the hyperlocal crowd for both creating content and consuming it as well. Chris Brogan talks today about how interesting it would be to be able to geotarget outbound tweets to make sure the local interest of a tweet is not shared across a larger group that don’t have any access or real concern for the data. If you want to judge how big this is by the money it attracts thedeal.com tells us …hyperlocal startups continued to get funded. In December, Outside.in Inc., which pulls together neighborhood blogs and other local content, announced it had closed a $7 million Series B round of funding, led by existing investor Union Square Ventures, with participation from new investor Turner Broadcasting System Inc. As part of Turner’s investment, CNN.com will use Outside.in’s aggregation and curation tools to power hyperlocal news across all of its sites. The new round brings Outside.in’s total raised to $12 million. And let’s not forget FourSquare’s growing success Over the summer, one of the most competitive early-stage fundings the VC industry saw all last year was that of FourSquare Labs Inc., which encourages people to share their whereabouts from local restaurants and businesses via their mobile phones. Union Square and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventureswon the honor of funding FourSquare’s $1.35 million Series A, announced in September, with Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter Inc. and the mobile payments startup Square, serving as an angel investor in Foursquare. How are you and your business addressing the hyperlocal craze? If you aren’t is your competition getting involved? It could be that in the very near future the first to find a hyperlocal hook into a market will be the winner.

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Hyperlocal Being Targeted by M&A and VC Crowd

While I just read this over at All Things Digital I am still scratching my head (which means I am typing with just one hand, so if this reads slow you’ll know why). AOL tends to be in the news in the past year or so more about whether the business will survive and how will it look when it is pushed out of the Time Warner nest officially in December. Why today would be any different I don’t know but the news from AOL is how they are asking for 2,500, or one third of their work force, to volunteer for a layoff. AOL, which has already told investors that it will spend up to $200 million firing a good chunk of its staff, has now told its employees. It is looking for “up to 2,500 volunteers,” CEO Tim Armstrong told his staff today. That’s a third of the company’s payroll. The voluntary layoff program begins on December 4, a few days before the company spins off from Time Warner (TWX). If the company doesn’t get enough volunteers, it will axe people on its own. Ok, so in this crappy job market you are asking someone to either volunteer to move on or just wait and see if they will be told to move on. What I didn’t see was what would make that kind of move better than rolling the dice and hoping that you don’t get axed? In other words, if there is any doubt in an AOL employee’s mind as to whether they would survive this what is the advantage of volunteering. Is there monetary incentive? I’m a little baffled. Of course, if you look at it from the business side this is the kind of news investors like to hear. In a gesture of “I’m suffering too” Tim Armstrong is not taking his bonus in the neighborhood of $1.5 million due him this year. All of the cynics in the crowd can chime in on that one I am sure. I have no comment but here is Armstrong’s take. “As a member of our team and the person who takes accountability for the results of the company, I am making the decision to forego my 2009 bonus. That decision is a personal one and is not a sign for the future payout of the overall bonus plan for employees.” So what about AOL as an Internet business? What about what this will look like moving forward? With ICQ on the block and MapQuest as well what is AOL going to be offering the market place when it is asked to stand alone other than 2,500 more folks with AOL on their resume when looking for work? It might be interesting to hear from the MP crowd as to what their view of AOL is in the Internet marketing space as we approach this new phase in the company’s history. Let’s hear it.

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AOL Asking 2,500 Employees to Fall on Their Sword