Thomsonlocal.com has signed a three-year deal with Microsoft to become the first independent reseller of AdCenter, the pay-per-click offering for its Bing search engine.  The deal "will enable Thomson Local to provide businesses with enhanced geo-targeting capabilities, to match their adverts to location specific queries by Bing users," according to the directories company. Microsoft has been advertising Bing extensively since March in a bid to grow its 3% share of search engine queries. (Source: Media Week)

The boss of Dutch mobile operator KPN, which is also active in Belgium and Germany, said that in future, heavy users of mobile data, e.g. by extensively using the Web on their mobile phones, will in future have to pay more, as “sanity” returns to the mobile industry that had charged high fees for voice calls while offering unlimited data downloads for very modest fees. In the long run, data would be more important than voice, KNP said. One needs to differentiate between heavy users, light users and people in between and charge each group accordingly. Voice also is data, but it is a very light use of data. In five years 10 % of mobile phone use may be voice and 90 % data. People should then pay less for voice and more for data. (Source: Financial Times)

The Economist writes that economic uncertainty and faltering confidence of small and medium sized enterprises continued to depress revenues at British directory publisher Yell. Reporting a 10.6 per cent drop in first-quarter organic revenues, the directories publisher said it did not expect any significant improvement in either the second or third quarters of the year.

123people darf öffentlich im Internet verfügbare und frei zugängliche Bilder zur Personensuche verwenden. Das Hamburger Landgericht wies eine Klage ab, in der die Suchmaschine beschuldigt wurde, das Foto einer Frau unrechtmäßig anzuzeigen, da diese einer Veröffentlichung nicht zugestimmt hatte. „Hat der Abgebildete sein Foto nicht gegen den Zugriff von Personensuchmaschinen gesperrt und die Webseite für Suchmaschinen optimiert, ist von einer Einwilligung in die Veröffentlichung durch 123people.de auszugehen“, argumentierte das Gericht. Das auf 123people.de gezeigte Bild stammte von einer Firmen-Homepage. Dafür hatte die Klägerin einer Veröffentlichung des Bildes zugestimmt. Das Gericht bezeichnete die Klage als zulässig, aber unbegründet, heißt es in der Erläuterung zum Urteil. 

People search engine 123people is allowed to use pictures in its people search that are freely available on the Internet. A Hamburg court rejected a complaint in which the search engine was accused of illegally using the picture of a woman, who had not expressly allowed its use. “If the person shown in the picture did not block it from access by search engines and if the website is search engine optimized, it can be assumed that assent for publication through 123people has been given”, the court said. The picture shown by 123people originated in a company homepage, for which the plaintiff had given permission. By extension, it was reasonable that search engines used it as well, the court said. The decision is a great success for social media platforms in Germany and could lead to similar judgments in other European countries. Since March 2010, 123people belongs to the PagesJaunes Group. (Source: www.internetworld.de)

The award winning mobile application adaffix (www.adaffix.com) announces its launch in Belgium today. adaffix enriches the call experience by adding relevant content to calls in real-time. The innovative application automatically displays the caller name if the caller is not in the user’s contacts list. It also instantly suggests businesses nearby if the user cannot reach a business on the phone. adaffix accesses the necessary data to deliver such information through a real-time search in international directory databases.

Seat Pagine Gialle announced a partnership with Vivaticket, a company specialised in managing ticketing and pre-sales for quality cultural and entertainment events. Thanks to the agreement with Vivaticket, the 89.24.24 Pronto PagineGialle telephone service is expanding its offer to users, who will be able to purchase tickets for all the events managed by Vivaticket simply by making a call to the Seat PG service and making the purchase following a step-by-step guide by a Personal Assistant. A personal credit card can be conveniently used to pay for the service.