MetroSEEQ

Gannett took a 13% dive on last Wednesday after revenue fell short.  This is significant because it’s a sign that newspapers are having difficulty making the transition to the online era.   Print advertising has been getting weaker and weaker.

Gannett’s medication is buying ShopLocal - all of it, a Chicago-based company valued at $85 million in 2006 is now only valued at $52.5 million.  The strategy is to use both ShopLocal with PointRoll ad network.

After doing a query for restaurants in ShopLocal’s default city in Minneapolis in ShopLocal, I just cannot figure how this is worth tens of millions.  It gave me 4 results — yes, only 4 results, not 4 out of 400 or 2000.  Just 4.  What’s worse?  It actually matched Restaurants in Home & Garden. Major confusion here.

Here are the 4 results, you can also query it and see what you get

1. Zagat to go restaurant & entertainment guide v5.0

2. White Restaurant Quality Tablecloth

3. Farberware Restaurant Pro 10″ open Skillet

4. Out to Brunch: At Mildred Pierce Restaurant.

DOUBLE Confusion - why are these not restaurants in Minneapolis?

What I cannot believe is how it has a 850 Alexa rank.  Pretty much the only thing cool about this site is browing circulars online.  But that’s way simple to setup from the technical standponit - anyone with some descent programming skills can set that up in a day by using some open source plugins.  I must be missing something here.  How come I, a somewhat web savvy individual, cannot figure out what value ShopLocal adds if I want to shop locally?  Anyone?