Internet Brands, Inc, a leading operator of media and e-commerce sites for "large ticket" consumer purchases, today announced the acquisition of Wikitravel and World66, two leading community travel guides of up-to-date, traveler-focused content. The sites are growing exponentially, collectively attracting more than 2 million visits per month, more than triple a year ago. Both websites utilize wiki-based …
Modern Day Dinosaurs Still Have Time To Adapt
Grant McCracken is sure there is an "anthropology of decline" that documents the symptomatology of regime transition. In fact, he keeps a simple typology on cardboard in his wallet....to make it easier to identity institutions in their last days. Stage 1. Benign neglect In the early days of regime transition, the incumbent (aka New York Times, Wall Street Journal) treats the new challenger (aka bloggers) with a …
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Is P&G Getting Emotional With Its Ads?
From BusinessWeek: To find a new message for Tide, P&G tried a twist on the traditional focus group. Instead of gathering women in a room, Tide managers and strategists from Saatchi & Saatchi spent two weeks in the field talking to women in Kansas City, Mo., and Charlotte, N.C. They followed women as they shopped and ran errands and sat in on bull sessions "to hear them dish about their lives," says Wanda Pogue, a …
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Magazines Poised For Unprecedented Growth, For Sure
Though much of the Freudian cannon has been debunked, some of his vocabulary still rings true, and if nothing else, provides handy explanations for otherwise inexplicable comments such as this one from Nina Link, president of the Magazine Publishers of America. Nina Link responded to Merrill Lynch's report that the Internet will take in more advertising dollars in 2006 than magazines by saying, "The people who report …
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Starbucks Staff Not Spelling It Out For Us
Starbucks is co-producing a Hollywood film that has nothing to do with coffee. Last January, Associated Press reported that Starbucks employees will wear lanyards with "Akeelah" buzz words during the month of April in the hope of sparking conversations about the movie, billed as the story of an 11-year-old girl from inner-city Los Angeles who makes it to a national spelling bee. It's now April and the Starbucks near …
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Social Networking…Hey, AOL Can Do That
Business 2.0 picked up rumors of the existence of AOL's "MySpace killer," due to launch in the next few weeks. According to reports, AOL plans to use its AIM instant messenger as a platform to jump on the social networking bandwagon. AOL program manager, Armughan Javaid, said the service "will be open for non-members, and it will be kick-ass!" [IN RELATED NEWS] ValleyWag reports that Jason Calacanis is the "secret …
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The Old Swipe Swindle
Do you like to raise hell against retail stupidity and injustice? Good. Here's one for you. According to Consumerist, stores that ask for a minimum purchase to swipe your credit card, are most likely violating their merchant agreement. …
Learning The Fractions Of An Online Economy
Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 poses some interesting economic questions about scale and efficiency. As consumers spend more and more of their media time online, ad dollars have been pouring into online media — the assumption has been that the billions of dollars that large companies spend on mass media advertising and marketing (i.e. TV ads) will ultimately follow the small company dollars online. If this assumption …
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