Greg kind of buries a great exposition on this topic in Marchex Gains, Beats Estimate. He differentiates Local as NOT YP and also not about Long Tail (which has always galled me anyway). He states that Local is about “transactions and the point of sale.” He notes how e-commerce is a side-line player in Local (true) and how the “Product Location” companies (Where2GetIt, Krillion, NearbyNow) are going to have a real impact here. I’m not sure I’d characterize the Internet as a “consideration medium” (I’d say it’s more a “conflagration medium”) but when it helps connect online shopping (in the window sense of the word) with offline buying, that’s Local. I’m convinced that “Yellow” as a brand can move from locating businesses to locating products (and let’s not mince words about what’s a product - renting a hotel room and getting your car serviced are still products). I look at Local as disaggregating products from the businesses that provide them and supporting the consumer from search to pick-up of those products. As Greg points out, supporting that process will have to utilize media convergence (laptop to in-car to handheld) and a next-generation of mashup (maps and inventories). Yellow as a brand can encompass this I believe - don’t think there’s anything else the brand can support.
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[...] I do think YP companies can seize an initiative here, particularly as they combine more micro with deconstructed buying and disaggregated product [...]