MySpace started off as a hub for indie bands to connect with their fans. Now, with a new partnership with the IAC/InterActiveCorp-owned Citysearch, it's hoping to do the same for the likes of bars, clubs, and restaurants.
Called "MySpace Local," the new section on the News Corp.-owned MySpace will be rooted in existing listings from Citysearch (restricted to major U.S. cities) that are souped up with social features like the ones that you might see on a band or celebrity's MySpace page (photos, videos, comments, and the like). It's launching with just "restaurants," "bars," and "nightlife" categories, but will eventually expand--and it'll only be available to a select number of users this week before rolling out to the rest of MySpace's U.S. users.
"We're using the tools of new media to make the discovery as social and therefore as relevant as possible," said Jeff Berman, president of sales and marketing at MySpace, in a conference call on Tuesday. "The first thing you will see are ratings and reviews from your actual friends. When a reviewer is anonymous or unknown, it's hard to say whether you should care what they think."
Eventually, MySpace Local will highlight reviews from celebrities, "influencers," and power users with "street cred." There will also be new features like menus and possibly an online reservation tool.
This move will put MySpace in competition with fast-growing reviews site Yelp, which has been dealing with image and credibility issues recently but which has nevertheless been catching up to Citysearch in reach.
It'll also present more opportunities for local advertising. The social network has been courting small advertisers with a program called MyAds. But there will be big brand advertisers on MySpace Local, too, with Outback Steakhouse and Coors signing on for the launch.
Citysearch, which recently overhauled its site, also syndicates some of its content to AOL.
Berman said that research showed about 50 percent of active Citysearch users have MySpace profiles that they check at least once a month. "There is healthy overlap, but there is also a healthy new audience to be reached," he said.
This post was expanded at 10:54 a.m. PDT.
Citysearch is still ahead, butupstart rival Yelp is catching up. Good thing Citysearch has brought in some much-needed new social features.
(Credit: Compete.com)Citysearch, the online business directory owned by Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, has gotten a full makeover. It's available now at beta.citysearch.com--there's a more streamlined and Ajax-y interface, but a few important features have been tweaked as well. According to company representatives, this is about a year and a half in the making.
First of all, instead of focusing on a select number of metro areas, Citysearch has expanded to a whopping 75,000 towns and neighborhoods, meaning that you can narrow down your focus to New York's East Village or Los Angeles' Culver City. Additionally, there's Facebook Connect integration, meaning that you can see what your Facebook friends have recommended or reviewed on Citysearch. Also on the social side of things, reviewing businesses on Citysearch is easier and more up-front. Previously, there had been more attention on editorial reviews as opposed to user reviews.
And Facebook approves, apparently. "At Facebook, we've found that remarkable things happen when you get trust, user control and identity right--people share more information, and become more open and connected," Facebook communications czar Elliot Schrage said in a joint release. "Citysearch's innovative new site shows how Facebook Connect can help information flow faster through a site while creating a filter for users to engage with localized content through the lens of their friends, family and colleagues."
That's a big deal for Citysearch: fast-growing start-up Yelp has started to gain some market share in the "user-generated reviews" department. According to traffic firm Compete.com, Yelp is still smaller but catching up. (Citysearch, for that matter, syndicates some of its content to big portals like AOL.)
Finally, Citysearch has launched a mobile site compatible with a number of different browsers and handsets--yes, including Apple's iPhone.
InterActiveCorp mogul Barry Diller may be getting rid of brands like Ticketmaster, LendingTree, and HSN, but he still wants to sell ads on them.
The sprawling media company announced Monday that it will launch an ad network to handle inventory across all its brands, such as Evite and Citysearch, as well as the ones that Diller and his executive team are opting to spin off into separate publicly traded companies.
"Maybe we're not brothers and sisters, but we're cousins," IAC Advertising Solutions president Rich Stalzer told AdAge about the companies it will spin off. The AdAge article also reported that IAC currently serves only a small percentage of its own ad inventory, outsourcing the rest.
IAC's new ad strategy focuses on targeting consumers in nine "cubes": youth (18 to 34 years old), men, women, "affluents," parents, active shoppers, active travelers, homeowners, and sports fans. More cubes are on the way. But of particular priority to IAC is the "affluents" niche, which can draw in far higher click-through rates because of those consumers' likelihood to spend larger amounts of money.
For once, IAC's arguably scattershot and unfocused array of retail and media brands could be helping it move forward.
That's because there are many ways that IAC could identify Web users as "affluents" (or anything else, for that matter) through the sheer variety of properties the conglomerate owns, as well as the ones that it is spinning off.
"We're in a unique position in that we can corroborate multiple kinds of data," Stalzer explained in a release, "including declared information users offer about themselves; transactional, online purchasing activity; and inferred, such as what they do offline like attend concerts or go on dates, from the diverse portfolio of IAC sites to more precisely identify users as part of a particular audience segment."
Someone who makes pricey purchases at the company's Gifts.com, for example, or who repeatedly queries Citysearch for restaurants of the Jean-Georges and Nobu variety, could be classified under the high-income "cube."
And Diller, well known as a yacht aficionado, is even more deeply connected to the luxury-brand market than your average CEO: He's married to fashion legend Diane von Furstenberg.
A Los Angeles-based law firm with a history of targeting online media companies for click fraud filed suit Tuesday against Citysearch, the directory site owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, as well as Ticketmaster, the ticketing site that IAC is attempting to spin out into a separate publicly traded company.
"Citysearch.com is defrauding its advertising customers of millions of dollars by not only turning a blind eye to click fraud, but in fact encouraging it as well," a statement from the firm Kabateck Brown Kellner read. The class action suit encompasses anyone in the U.S. who paid for pay-per-click advertising space on Citysearch, but the named plaintiff is Tom Lambotte, who purchased ad space on Citysearch and then claimed that the number of clicks on his ads rose suspiciously.
Representatives from IAC and Citysearch were not immediately available for comment.
According to the complaint, filed in a California court, Lambotte first purchased Citysearch ads in late 2007, didn't see a gain in traffic to his site, and attempted to cancel his ad account. The cancellation process dragged out, he said, and in the meantime his ad clicks started to escalate suspiciously. He speculated that click fraud--in which clicks to ads are meant only to drive up the rate the advertiser pays and not to purchase the product--was at play.
Claims in click fraud lawsuits are sometimes questionable, and Kabateck Brown Kellner has extensive experience in the field that could raise a red flag: the plaintiff-only firm has won against both Yahoo and Google, and attorney Brian Kabateck recently went after Google's AdWords advertising program, claiming that it deceived customers.
Consequently, a suit against yet another (smaller) player in the search market could come across as an attempt to just filch more cash from big dot-coms. Or, as the suit goes forward, Lambotte's claims, as represented by Kabateck, could show a legitimate foundation.
Search companies, meanwhile, announced a coalition against click fraud nearly two years ago in conjunction with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Media Rating Council.
This post was updated at 11:24 AM on Friday, Feb. 15 to clarify AOL's use of Citysearch ad listings.
InterActiveCorp chair Barry Diller recently went on the record saying that he wouldn't buy AOL unless somebody handed it to him for free. But that doesn't rule out content partnerships: AOL announced Thursday that it has formed a partnership with Citysearch, the IAC-owned business directory.
Citysearch content, including reviews, photos, editorial content, and videos, will be featured on a number of AOL sites like AOL CityGuide, AOL Local Search, and MapQuest. In return, AOL will display Citysearch's "paid listing" advertisements on those sites as well.
The deal comes at a rough time for the New York-headquartered parent companies as both attempt to invigorate their focus on ad revenues. The struggling AOL may be split into two businesses to separate its once-ubiquitous Internet access service from its ad-supported media properties. IAC, meanwhile, is spinning off its retail-oriented brands and keeping its digital media properties intact. Citysearch, along with properties like Ask.com, Evite, and Match.com, will be part of the "new IAC."
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