Local Online Week-in-Review. (The news you might have missed!)

We know you always mean to read everything that pops into your Bloglines feed, your Twitter page, and your email inbox. But just in case your week got crazy, we've got you covered.



Obama having dinner with Zuck? Navigating the new Facbook Pages. New data about local business...

Are you caught up?



Here's a quick snapshot of the news that made headlines this week in the local landscape.



___________________________________________





Obama’s Dinner in the Valley (NYT)



Whether Zynga is really worth $10 billion seems not to have been the main topic of dinner conservation when President Obama met with technology executives on Thursday night.

“The president specifically discussed his proposals to invest in research and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire, along with his goal of doubling exports over five years to support millions of American jobs,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said in a statement to Bloomberg News. Read More.



How Google Can Beat Facebook: No, Its Not on the Web (GigaOm)



A few years ago, Jeff Jarvis, a good friend of mine, published a book called What Would Google Do? When he wrote that book, Google had an aura of invincibility. Fast forward to today: Thanks to Facebook, it doesn’t seem so invincible. The new social web has passed it by. So, the question today is: What should Google do? Read More.





Social Media Marketing Up 40% Among Local Businesses (InformationWeek)



Local businesses are turning to inexpensive social media to promote their products and services, but the few that have experimented with group discount offerings from online sites are unlikely to repeat the experience, a new report from MerchantCircle found. Read More.



5 ways the new Facebook Pages can benefit your business (TNW)



Last week brought a whole new set of Facebook page changes which we covered in some depth but there is another angle that we’ve been thinking about that didn’t occur to us at first and that is business networking. Read More.

Q1 2011 Merchant Circle MCI Survey Results

Below are the results of our quarterly Merchant Confidence Index (MCI) survey for Q1 of 2011. The Index is designed to track trends in small business sentiment over time.



This fifth Merchant Confidence Index survey was fielded online, between January 22nd and February 3rd, 2011, and sent to a random sample of MerchantCircle's member base of over 1.6 million local business owners. There were 8,456 total responses from local business owners across the United States.



Expectations for the future



How do you expect your sales revenues to change over the next three months?

State of the U.S. economy



How would you rate today’s economy compared to the past twelve months?

Hiring expectations



How do you expect your company’s headcount to change over the next three months?

Marketing expenditures



How do you expect your marketing/advertising expenditures to change over the next three months?

Merchant Confidence Index Calculation

Adoption of specific online marketing services

Are you promoting your business with the following websites/services?

Marketing budget



What is your annual ad/marketing budget?

Most effective marketing channels



Select the top THREE most effective marketing or advertising methods your business uses or has used.

Expectations for length of recession



To what extent do you agree with the following statement? “The worst effects of the recession are behind us?

Respondent Profiles



How many people does your business employ?

Which single business category best describes your business?

Local Online Week-in-Review. (The news you might have missed!)

We know you always mean to read everything that pops into your Bloglines feed, your Twitter page, and your email inbox. But just in case your week got crazy, we've got you covered.



Groupon's dicey Superbowl ad dominated the post-game conversation, and not everyone agrees that it was a misstep. What's your take on their risky approach?



Here's a quick snapshot of the news that made headlines this week in the local landscape.



___________________________________________



Groupon's Superbowl Ad Quickly Draws Backlash (WSJ)



"It’s not clear yet whether Groupon sought controversy for its Super Bowl commercial to gain publicity, but either way the venture capital-backed daily deal site sure got it. Immediately after one of its three commercials ran during Fox’s second-half coverage of Super Bowl XLV, hundreds of people took to Twitter to air their displeasure with the ad." Read more.



Groupon Win? Why They Knew Exactly What They Were Doing With The “Tibet” Ad (Social Times)



"With the ads, we have seen the best and worst that social media has to offer. At its peak, the online realm fosters debate, promotes curiosity, and gets people thinking outside their comfort zone. The Groupon videos are being talked about on Facebook and Twitter, embedded on blogs and forwarded through email, as well they should." Read more.



Google Gets Heavy-Handed In Local Search (Small Biz Trends)



"It’s been hard not to notice the very calculated steps that Google has been taking over the past few months as it’s geared up its local and mobile properties, slowing trying to push everyone else out of its way. Well, unless you haven’t been watching. If not, here’s what you missed." Read more.



Google Local Search Strategy Needs Marketing Muscle (eWeek GoogleWatch)



"While Google has a veritable gold mine of mobile, local and social technology, what it lacks is the marketing oomph to make others aware of it." Read more.

A letter from the CEO

As the year comes to a close and we take a moment to reflect on the last 12 months, I am almost overwhelmed at the changes that came with 2010.



The economy finally seems to be on an upswing, and while we've heard wonderful stories of success and perseverance, we recognize that many of our merchants struggled through this last year. Because we believe in the power of Main Street merchants, it remains the daily mission of our team to provide local business owners with free online resources and a community of support.



Pulling that off, however, has been quite the endeavor.



This year we've almost doubled our headcount. Our crowded little office of almost 40 people is a testament to the rapid growth we've required to continue with our "Merchant Success First" mission. We've added new features and products to further empower our users as you compete with big-budget big box stores. MerchantCircle is committed to helping merchants Generate Success Daily.



With the additions of Time Bridge and Bloglines to the MerchantCircle family, we have even greater hopes for how we will be able to serve you in the coming months. We're confident that by offering more local content and an appointment-scheduling tool, you'll be able to more easily connect with local customers.



Thank you for being part of the MerchantCircle community, we're looking forward to creating an even more successful 2011!





Ben Smith, Founder and CEO

The MerchantCircle Team- This is how we roll around here.


We rolled out a milestone release on Thursday, November 19th. It seemed to go pretty smoothly...



At first.



Within an hour or so, we noticed some "503" errors. (We know. You noticed them, too.) "Maybe we're under an extreme load and dropping connections?" Nope. We checked our system… and while there was a heavy load, it wasn't anything we can't normally handle with ease. 
 



First we did some research. Then we ran some tests. Then we analyzed data.
 
 



"At this point, I was pretty sure that we had characterized the problem correctly. Solving the problem is a completely different story, however. This is where the entire team really swung into action." Explains Wes Mitchell, VP of Engineering. "Some people started running stress tests on internal systems to try to reproduce the problem. Others started analyzing log files to try and figure out which requests were taking the longest. Other people looked at database queries to figure out if some were taking way longer than expected."
 




We have a very committed team with a bias towards action and we consistently operate under a sense of urgency. Debugging a problem like this on a heavily-loaded live system is extremely difficult and frustrating. It's easy to try to mask the problem by, for example, just putting in more hardware… But that's not how we do things around here.



Given the merchant/customer focus that is a critical part of who we are, the pressure to avoid a devastating hit for our customers was extremely high. Our team kicked it into high gear with aggressive contributions and teamwork to find, address, and permanently fix is issue. 




"I can't say enough about how the team handled this challenge. Lots of people worked a lot over a period of seven days. We progressively narrowed down the problem to a single request. We went over all the changes we had introduced with a fine-tooth comb. We tested various features by turning things on and off one at a time. We reviewed the code again, and again, and again." Said Wes.



We're a lean team of less than 40 hard-working (unusually cool) people and we're grassroots passionate about our company and the merchants we serve. But because we're such a small, invested team, we communicate constantly and pull together like a family- whether we're celebrating or struggling.



Wes continued, "Here's what I'm most proud of: my folks don't give up. They take it personally. They think things through. They all worked together. There was no blaming, no egos out of place. Everybody helped. They went after something really hard, and they beat it. It doesn't get any better than that."



When facing a major technical problem, our engineering team actually became more effective as they rallied to find the solution. Not one of the engineers considered giving up or passing responsibility to someone else. They approached it as an opportunity to look at the solution in innovative ways. They showed amazing commitment and focus, and that commitment paid off when they found the solution.
 




Director of HR, Juanita Lott noted, "We celebrated the fix as a company… and in the dozens of congratulatory emails that followed that day, not one member of the team focused on their personal contribution… they all called out the contributions of their peers. I love this place."



We have a secret little motto in the MerchantCircle office: GSD. It stands for "Get Stuff Done." We literally have it scribbled across white boards and it's occasionally posted to our facebook statuses. We even text it to each other- for a little extra encouragement, and a reminder that we're on the same team.



Founder Ben Smith said it best, "Our team shares a common passion to grow our business; we don't have time for politics or lip service. We GSD. Respect. Teamwork. Innovation. We value merchants above all and do whatever it takes to provide them with the best products and service. I'm proud of our talented engineering team for actively demonstrating our core values as they quickly resolved this issue."



We recognize that no one is above the occasional engineering glitch. But because over 1.4 million small business owners count on MerchantCircle, our team of perfectionists knows the most important things we can do when issues arise are fix them fast and fix them right… And having great take-out delivered, doesn't hurt.


 
 


 
 
  

Sneak Peak Into the New Bloglines!

Dear Bloglines Users,



As you have probably seen over the past few weeks, MerchantCircle will be transitioning Bloglines users to a NEW and improved Bloglines experience. As part of this transition we'd like to share some of the new features as well as the migration steps that you’ll be guided through to ensure you have continued, uninterrupted service.



Take a moment to view the short one-minute video for more details









Some of the major callouts include



- How you'd like to set-up your reader for Multiple views or the traditional Bloglines reader view, still available today.

- Mosaic View for a quick and graphical way to view your feeds

- Drag and Drop capabilities to organize your feeds

- Facebook and Twitter Sharing



As Bloglines users ourselves, we’re excited to roll out this improved version of Bloglines and look look forward to your feedback! (Twitter @Bloglines)



Your MerchantCircle/Bloglines Team

Your Bloglines service is here to stay!

Dear Bloglines Users,

You probably already know that MerchantCircle has entered into an agreement with Ask.com to keep Bloglines running…

What you may not know is who we are. Well, here's the mini elevator pitch: MerchantCircle is the largest online network of local business owners, combining social networking features with free marketing tools to connect local business owners with their communities. MerchantCircle’s 1.4 million business owners and hundreds of thousands of consumers engage in our Community Forums, posting blogs about their areas of expertise, and asking and answering questions in MerchantCircle Answers.

We've been around since 2005, and with over 20 million business listings on our network- you can trust that we're not going anywhere- and neither is your Bloglines service. In fact, we're pretty excited to introduce this fantastic service to our current user base of merchants.

Our game plan is to bring you the best technology, with an easy transition, and avert the potential frustrations that can come with change. This does mean making some tough decisions, but our goal remains: Keep Bloglines alive and create the best experience possible for the largest number of users. 

Beginning around December 1^st, when you log in to your Bloglines account (using your same id and password), you'll be transitioned to the NEW Bloglines experience. We'll be providing complete details on the almost-automatic migration process in which you'll just port your feeds over to the MerchantCircle-powered service.

 And no, it won't be IDENTICAL to the old Bloglines experience. We are going to provide better, more stable reader technology, with a wider range of user features, but some minimally used features in need of expensive updates didn't make the cut. Instead, we've included some helpful new resources that you didn't have before; and we'll continue to incorporate as many features as possible. Our own CEO has been an avid Bloglines user since 2005! He too wants the best, most familiar Blogline experience possible.

A perfectly smooth transition is ideal. But we do know it's a safe bet to expect a few bumps in the road. Should that happen, we apologize in advance and assure you that we'll be addressing any issues with a sense of urgency. We welcome your feedback and encourage you to reach out on Twitter. (@Bloglines)

Keep an eye out for future communication as we get closer to the big changeover day. We look forward to serving you!

Your MerchantCircle/Bloglines Team