Google Acquires Zagat To Flesh Out Local Reviews
Foursquare might want to start upping their ante right now. Gowalla…well…I don’t know what to say.
What an interesting choice by Google. A surprisingly low-tech choice. Yelp is the company that should worry most about this purchase.
A conflict of interest on the side? One of the internet’s most popular movie review websites will now be owned by one of America’s major movie and entertainment studios. The acquisition has less to do with Rotten Tomatoes, however, than it does Flixster, a movie review/streaming company that counted RT as one of its subsidiaries — Warner Bros. wanted Flixster to push a competitive advantage against Netflix, and their new ownership of the widely-known review aggregator is a byproduct of that. So, if Warner Bros. makes a piece of utter dreck, hopefully you’ll still be able to see that not-so-fresh “tomatometer” rating. source
Have to say… we just checked out The Daily. Honestly didn’t expect to be as impressed with it as we were. Visually, it’s stunning … some rough edges, but it makes the Wired app look like last year’s model. The modular masthead on the front page is creative. And the sheer density of the content is just insane. There is enough here to keep you reading for an hour. The editorial sensibility is very New York Post, though with a much softer and more beautiful edge. The Post snarkiness shows up in the briefs and the gossip page more than the main stories. It’s definitely a Murdoch pub. One feature of note: There’s a “By The Numbers” page that kinda reminds us of this site a little. The daily furniture is beautiful. There are share functions so it’s not closed off to the web. But more than anything, you get the overwhelming feeling of disbelief that you get all this stuff for 99 cents a week – and that’s a feeling that’s been missing from a lot of journalism lately. Will be interesting to see how others respond. source
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