The Crosswater and Profilo survey asks job-seekers to rate their satisfaction levels with German job portals and job search engines on a scale of 1 to 4 with 1 being “very satisfied” and 4 “not satisfied at all”. Two averages are calculated for all portals and search engines with more than 30 respondents – one for “satisfaction level” and a second for “search quality”.

The first survey was conducted in 2008. The aim of the research is to identify trends and long-term changes in user-behaviour (eg. job portal functions jobseekers judge to be valuable).

The 2012 survey showed clearly that job search engines satisfy the needs of job-seekers best, with specialist, or niche portals in second place and the generalists in third place. In other words, job search engines received lower satisfaction averages than job portals.

What is more, there was a substantial gap between job search engines and generalists (table below). One example: the worst-performing job search engine (Stellenanzeigen.net), received the same satisfaction rating (1.74) as the best-performing generalist (Stellenmarkt.de). The story repeated itself with the indicator “search quality”, which also measured better for search engines than specialist portals.

Crosswater/Profilo made no attempt to explain why job search engines made such a jump forward in the popularity stakes in the past year. Was it simplicity of search, ease of use, site speeds, or the big number of jobs on offer which impressed job-seekers? Probably a bit of all. One thing is sure: it couldn’t have been due to the shift of job searching from PC to mobile, because none of the job search engines in the table below has apps or mobile sites. The popularity boost from that quarter is still to come!

Click here for table in English (PDF):
Crosswater

The company also shifted Jay Fogarty to VP of strategy and innovation from VP of new revenue platforms.

“We are very excited to announce … Peter’s appointment [which] comes as we are moving from a successful diligence phase in some of our new ventures to an execution phase, a period in which we begin to scale our new businesses,” said Kirk Davis, GateHouse COO.

Newton spent 17 years at The Boston Globe, including finance and advertising positions. He was president of BostonWorks, the Globe’s print-and-online recruitment program before the paper became a Monster.com affiliate. Newton later joined Monster.com, serving as SVP and GM of small and mid-sized businesses and heading Monster Media Alliance, which grew to more than 350 affiliates. He also worked as VP for bizdev at Helium.com, a content farm, and ran his own consultancy, Big Rock Consulting Group, for about two years.

The announcement is here.

Quoka.de belongs to Austrian media group Vorarlberger Medienhaus (soon to be renamed Rust Media).

Quoka CEO Patrick Günter still shies away from calling Quoka “Germany’s No. 1 small ads platform”, because Quoka’s biggest competitor, Kleinanzeigen.ebay, may have more traffic than Quoka.

“No official traffic statistics are available for Kleinanzeigen.ebay, but we estimate their traffic to be slightly higher than ours. On ads listed we are ahead of them,” he said.

Assuming Kleinanzeigen.ebay has between 4 and 5 million listed ads, the pecking order in Germany looks like this (all statistics supplied by portals, not verified by 3rd parties):

* Quoka.de (5.08 million)
* Kleinanzeigen.ebay.de (4 – 5 million)
* Markt.de (2.6 million)
* Dhd24.com (1 million)
* Smazaar.de (1 million) (read about Smazaar.de here)
* Kalaydo.de (530,000 )

The milestone for ads listed was reached about two months after Quoka set a new record for monthly unique visits and page views as measured by Germany’s IVW. In March the IVW officially measured 15 million unique visits and more than 128 million page views for Quoka – the highest numbers in the platform’s 29-year existence.

“The new highs prove that small ads remain a major topic in Germany,“ said Nina Christin Müller, head of online marketing at Quoka. “Our most popular categories are for animals, autos and home/furniture. And in summer the categories holiday/travel and wellness/health grow very popular,” she added.

Quoka’s app (for iPhone and iPad only) enables on-the-go ad listing with video or photo. “This app gets ever more popular and our next update will enable users to amend ads listed on-the-go on their PCs at home,” said Müller.

Clues as to what the plain-as-can-be classified portal might have in mind are in the job description:

Senior UI / Usability / Front End Engineers at craigslist.org (financial district)

Date: 2012-05-16, 7:39AM PDT

Senior UI / Usability / Front End Engineers 

“it feels like newspaper classifieds.”

Monster Worldwide, one of the last major job sites to come to the social recruitment table,  has finally announced the ability for job candidates to see which of their socially-networked friends have connections to the hiring firm, right from the Monster.com site. Candidates won’t be searching Facebook or LinkedIn -  they’ll be searching BeKnown, the Monster-Worldwide-owned Facebook app. If a candidate tries the search and is not set up on BeKnown, she or he will be prompted to create that free BeKnown profile and account.

There’s nothing really innovative here. However, the fact that it’s Monster means that 100 million monthly visitors –  most of whom have not set up a BeKnown profile –  will be encouraged to do so.  That’s good for BeKnown, which in the social recruitment battle is way behind both fellow-Facebook-app BranchOut, and LinkedIn. For more on what each of these big three social recruitment sites offer, what Monster told us about the socialization and why it waited so long,  and where each firm is headed, see our upcoming CIR.

Here’s the Monster Worldwide announcement:

Monster Brings Networking into Core Site with the Integration of BeKnown(TM), its Professional Networking App on Facebook

That’s the idea behind Vancouver, Canada-based startup TikTok which offers deals on its mobile app that are completely free. The deals are geo-located so the freebies can pop up as you’re walking to work – a free latte at that new café? Sure, why not?

TikTok has some catches and, depending on how you spin it, they’re either really cool or big turn-offs. First, the free offers are usually pretty small: a single slice of pizza. The merchant is hoping you’ll also buy a second slice, some garlic sticks and maybe even a drink. But the slice is still free.

Second, the offers expire quickly, often in a number of hours. TikTok is trying to balance a business’s traffic during the day. You won’t see those free slices during peak pizza time. That’s good for the merchants, who won’t have to worry about a flood of customers with half-off Groupon vouchers clogging up the lunch time rush.

The service is free for now. TikTok, which just launched, plans to charge merchants for premium functionality – for example, to customize the target audience or run more offers.

TikTok has about 2,000 users signed up and 120 businesses on board in Vancouver. The company will be expanding to other cities in Canada, with eyes on the U.S. market as well.

And all 3 hope to have their portals finally completed by end-2012. AutoScout24’s effort suffered a setback when a senior manager walked over to a competitor earlier this month. Manfred Seidel, ex-marketing and sales head of AutoScout24, started as head of marketing and sales at Fairgarage.de.

AutoScout24 and Fairgarage have similar business models, but different approaches to rolling out their businesses. Any of Germany’s 35,000 workshops* may register and list their services on these two platforms for a monthly fee. (Read all about AutoScout24’s service in our December article.) Auto-owners request and compare quotes from workshops in their vicinity at no cost.

In contrast, only invited workshops are listed on Reparaturpilot.de. Invited workshops offer their services at a pre-negotiated discount. Registered users request quotes on the platform and conclude contracts directly with the workshops of their choice. Reparaturpilot is not a party to the contract, but receives a commission calculated as a percentage of the contract value.

The race to be first with a platform representing workshops nationwide and offering a comprehensive list of services is not an exclusive race, in the sense that the winner takes all and the No. 2 and 3 must close their doors. It may well happen that workshops register on 2 platforms – or even on all 3.

Rather, the race is about avoiding the “me-too label”.

When AutoScout24 launched its repair services mediation portal on Dec. 1 last year, the platform serviced a small geographic area only and mediated a few, simple workshop services only, such as inspections, oil- and tire-changes. Since then it has extended its geographic range and added services. The declared goal is to roll the business out in its final form to cover the whole country by the end of 2012.

Fairgarage belongs to the independent, Munich-based firm United Vehicles. It aims to have its platform finally ready by the third quarter of 2012. When workshops register on this platform, they must list the services they offer.

Potential  problem: the auto-owner must know exactly what is wrong with his vehicle (and what needs to be done to fix the problem) to obtain a quote on Fairgarage. In reality, the auto-owner seldom knows what is wrong and what needs to be replaced. If that’s the case, the auto-owner must first obtain a detailed assessment of the problem and solution (eg. what needs to be replaced) from a workshop, before he can sensibly use Fairgarage to compare prices.

Still, the business is picking up speed.

“In Munich more than 200 dealers and workshops have registered on the portal, since its launch in November 2011,” GW-trends.de reported Fairgarage MD Christian Hille to have said at a recent press conference in Munich (here in German). “About 57,000 users have visited the workshop portal since. They placed 220 enquiries for repairs,”  he said.

“Later this month auto-owners will be able to commission repair jobs and make appointments on the portal at no cost. A so-called white-label software product for workshops is being developed, which will enable them to integrate Fairgarage in their websites,” he said.

Reparaturpilot claims to offer registered auto-owners quality repair services at lower prices.

“Quotes submitted by workshops are checked by 6 experienced employees, before we pass them on to auto-owners,” said Emil Cete, founder and operator of Reparaturpilot.de. “At this stage about 50 workplaces have signed up. The network of workplaces is extended selectively and in a targeted way. The nationwide network will be established by the end of 2012 and by end-2013 we expect to have 15,000 users,” said Cete.

+ About 50 percent of the 35,000 workshops are under contract with dealerships, or manufacturers. The other half are independent workshops, working on any number of auto brands of their choice.

Die Heisse Draht operates the very successful free, small-ads platform Dhd24.com, which is often referred to as Germany’s third biggest small ads platform after Quoka.de and Kleinanzeigen.ebay.de. A spokesman told AIM Group Dhd24’s roughly 1 million listed ads are duplicated on Smazaar. So, the two platforms mirror one another, but “wear different clothes”.

Dhd.24.com is a small ads platform in the “old, proven format” (look here), with lists on the home page, which accentuate the wide variety of goods for sale on the platform, but also leave the impression of being a rather boring environment.

Enter the “Spassfaktor” (fun factor). Smazaar is an app backed up by a stationary website, which turns selling “stuff” online into a fun-activity, the spokesman said. The look-and-feel of the site is young and invites participation. The big drawcard is the app, which enables the user to post the pics he has taken with his smartphone to Smazaar by simply shaking the phone. Add some text and ready!

“The keywords are “fun”, “easy” and “quick results”, meaning it was important to us that the user in the target group should see the result of his effort quickly,” the spokesman said. That explains the unusual pay-off line: Place six ads in less than a minute. Naturally, there are links to Facebook and YouTube. In fact, the social vibe is unmistakable.

One of many illustrations (note the target market!)

The look-and-feel alone makes Smazaar.de worth a browse. Probably the most interesting page is this one, where the listing process is explained. You must agree, the message is clear – even to a non-reader of German!

In short, Die Heisse Draht may well grow the interest of young people in selling online with this attempt. And the strategic approach, namely to target platforms to sub-groups, is very interesting. In fact, it has copy-potential. As an effort to drag online selling into the social media era, Smazaar has success-potential.

• The platform launched with an Android app only, which is interesting in itself. The iPhone app will be available in June.

The basic concept behind RentCompass is nothing we haven’t seen before – a Google Map with available rentals appearing as house icons. Click any item to go to the property’s details page, which includes the usual goodies – pictures, contact info, floor plans. But in the relatively smaller Canadian market, a small fish can make a bigger splash.

RentCompass has so far been available as a website and as a geo-smart mobile app that shows you apartments in the vicinity of where you are at the moment – i.e., walk down the street and see what’s for rent. It’s available for the iPhone and Android phones.

The Facebook app basically puts the standalone app’s functionality into Facebook. Once inside the the social network’s all-encompassing world, you can like, share and comment on a rental, as well as ask your Facebook friends their opinions too. Given the popularity of Facebook for mobile, it’s a good move by RentCompass.

The company also has a presence on Twitter (with its own app too), but the tweets are just a feed of every new property appearing on the website; it’s not location savvy, making it more of a promotional ploy than a truly functional addition to the RentCompass family.

Listing and searching rentals are free on RentCompass. The company says it’s the first mobile service in Canada for rental apartments and the number one downloaded app in Canada for rental searching.

Between them the two B2B sites feature over 90,000 ads and a joint visitor total approaching 3 million a year.

Additionally, while so much focus is now on pushing online vehicle-shoppers to the specific makes and models they might crave, and then providing an assortment of local dealers who have the car in stock, Cars.com has rolled out new features to help showcase specific dealers. It’s the first of many changes, according to the listing giant’s recent announcement.

The new BaseDrive package for dealers – an automatic upgrade in most markets – includes:

•  Reporting – Total contacts, broken down as count of ad prints, map views, clicks to dealership website, email leads, phone calls to the number supplied by Cars.com, and chat sessions. A contact is recorded anytime a user performs one of these activities. For example, a contact recorded when a shopper clicks to a dealer’s website. If that same shopper calls the dealer, an additional contact is recorded.
• Video showcasing
• Partnership network 
• Dealer Reviews by consumers – with the assistance of the Cars.com Reputation Management Tool Kit to make the most of the feature.
• Chat
• Mobile – both mobile-optimized site and apps, with Send-to-Phone feature so consumers can save their choice of vehicle listing.

Here’s the announcement, with more details.

Wall Street was buzzing last week on rumors that LinkedIn (LNKD) was in talks to acquire Monster (MWW). According to a Reuters story, LinkedIn Corp and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners are among a number of parties that have expressed interest in a potential deal for Monster Worldwide Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, as the Internet jobs-search company is preparing data for potential buyers.

The stock shot up on the hype. However, Business Insider and a few others quickly squashed the report as bunk, accusing Monster of desperately trying to stir-up interest.

The thought of a high-growth business like LinkedIn strapping on an albatross like Monster is a bit ridiculous if you think about it for a second. So who, one like me must ask, would buy Monster?

As far as I can tell, the answer is: No one.

Yeah, nobody. John Doe. The invisible man.

Look: Facebook’s IPO is coming up, and analysts are crying about “decelerated growth” and staying the company doesn’t deserve its current valuation. So, knowing growth is what drives the markets, then you have to ask where Monster’s growth catalyst is? 6Sense? SeeMore? BeKnown? Be serious.

Aside from a massive hiring Renaissance, I don’t see any significant growth on the horizon. And certainly nothing to get a buyer all hot-and-bothered.

That said, if a buyer does come out of the woodwork, it’s likely to have Asian roots, hoping to get a foothold in the U.S. and other markets Monster serves. 51Job perhaps? With a market cap greater than Monster’s, it’s possible. Seek.com.au out of Australia perhaps? Nah. Someone out of Europe? It’s kind of a mess there at the moment, in case you didn’t get the memo.

Time will obviously tell. This year’s presidential election will be interesting for business. But methinks there will be no savior riding into to town on a white Trumpasaurus.

Market research firm ForeSee was commissioned to study both merchant and customer satisfaction with Groupon. The Daily Deals behemoth scored an 83 with customers and 79 with merchants, way ahead of most online retailers.

The jump from 25 percent to 30 percent mobile access from December 2011 to March 2012 may have been the catalyst for the new “up-to-the-minute” Groupon Now success, with 1.5 million Now deals sold.

With past store-owner complaints that Groupon was being far too selective in its choice of who could offer Deals, it’s nice to see that merchants are declaring their happiness with a Deals site.  We suspect that merchant approval is partly due to the Groupon Merchant Center, where merchants can track response, administer and see the history of their deals, and manage their Groupon Rewards activity. Here’s the earnings report.

Haaretz made its announcement with the upbeat proclamation of “the start of a new era,” adding that it “will enable us to provide you with accurate and comprehensive news coverage, analyses and commentary on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.”

The revamped site, which went live on Monday morning, is slightly more content heavy than its predecessor, but not enough to warrant such a rosy declaration, in our opinion.

Haaretz’s new digital subscriptions pricing plan mirrors that of The New York Times – no charge for access to a limited number of articles per month (only 10 vs. 20 at The Times) with the front page always free and the rest nestled behind a pay wall. Print subscribers will get access to the whole kit and kaboodle. A subscription will cover all digital platforms: web and mobile (both smart phones and tablets).

Also, as with The Times, savvy users can bypass the access limitations by typing the name of an article of interest into Google.

Haaretz’s aping The New York Times makes sense: its daily English language edition is bundled with The International Herald Tribune, The Times’ version for Europe and the “rest of the world.”

While we are all for newspapers trying out ways to better monetize their offerings in tough times, sequestering content for paying subscribers works only if you’re the undisputed leader in your space: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist have all succeeded. Other attempts to cut free access have too often failed.

So, is Haaretz the clear king of the Israeli news space? Their Hebrew edition certainly has elements of The New York Times, particularly in terms of its writing, columnists, features and investigative reporting. It also has the fastest news coverage, making it the go-to site after a terrorist attack or midnight coalition re-alignment, But the online competition – in English, in particular – is fierce in Israel. The Jerusalem Post’s website has far more readers than Haaretz; indeed, it’s the web’s number one English language site on Israel and Jewish subjects in terms of traffic.

More recently, a new paper – The Times of Israel – has come on the scene. Launched earlier this year by the former editor of The Jerusalem Post and backed by an investor with pockets deep enough to cover the first two years of operation, the writing is uniformly excellent, superior even than to Haaretz (which consists of direct translations from Hebrew). The Times of Israel also borrows a page from The Huffington Post, making liberal use of (unpaid) bloggers.

Haaretz has one thing going for it that the other English-language online Israeli news sites don’t, though: a top-notch mobile app. The Times of Israel’s David Horowitz says that a smart phone app is on the newspaper’s development horizon but, in the meantime, a browser version optimized for mobile will be out soon.

Will Haaretz succeed where others have faltered? The company has high hopes, ending its announcement on a decidedly cheery note:

As we approach our first centennial, we hope you will join us as we embark on a new chapter in our history, one in which will pledge our allegiance to maintaining the standards of journalistic excellence and integrity that are the bedrock of Haaretz as we explore the new frontiers of the modern digital age.

The group released its financial results for the first quarter recently. In the quarter group revenue grew to €789 million ($1 billion U.S.) from €736 million in the 1Q last year (+7 percent) and the digital division’s share in group revenue rose to a whopping 33 percent, the company said. (Read full statement here).

The digital division’s share in total revenue is climbing so fast, that the declared goal of growing it to 50 percent of total revenue suddenly seems very realistic. On the way to that goal, another important psychological barrier will be removed first – maybe already in the second quarter. That’s when the digital division may overtake the local newspaper division to become Axel Springer’s biggest revenue-generating division.

The digital division came very close to that goal in the first quarter, when digital’s revenue rose strongly to €263 million from €202 million, while the division local newspapers contributed a stagnating €276 million. So, at the end of the 1Q the gap was just €13 million.

The digital division also grew its EBITDA 82 percent to €47 million, while its EBITDA margin climbed 5 percentage points to 17.8 percent .

Dr. Mathias Döpfner, chief executive officer of Axel Springer, said: “In line with our defined digitization strategy, we strengthened our digital division with the acquisition of the British online recruiting firm Totaljobs.com and launch of (coupon portal) KaufDA in Russia”.

So, Axel Springer is successful and confident. All the more reason to look south – to Switzerland, where the joint-venture RingierAxelSpringer is head-quartered.

Axel Springer and Swiss media group Ringier merged their businesses in Eastern Europe in 2010 in a 50:50 partnership. It was supposed to be a partnership of equals in every respect – also as far as management is concerned.

But, recently, Ringier’s contribution to the management expertise of RingierAxelSpringer got very thin – at least at the very top. To the point where success-spoiled Axel Springer may start wondering whether it is alone in the project.

Here is how each partner contributes:

• In the 4-seat board 2 seats are occupied by Axel Springer people and 2 by Ringier appointees. The president and director are Springer representatives, while the vice-president and CFO are Ringier nominees. Until recently Ringier was represented by Christian Unger and Tobias Schulz-Isenbeck. When both defected recently, Ringier was forced to fall back on younger representatives.
• In the 3-man executive two  (Mr. Fels and Mr. Dekan) are Axel Springer appointees and the third (Mr. Boos) is an outside appointment. So, here Ringier contributes nothing.

So, at the highest level Axel Springer seems to be calling the tune – at least for now. On the next management level things are more evened out:

• Of the 7 divisional heads 4 are Ringier appointees (Mr. Korner, Mr. Späth, Mr. Mauron and Mrs. Delvenakiotis) and 3 Axel Springer appointees (Mrs. Kruse, Mr. Reimelt and Mr. Dauck).
• On the level of the country managers Ringier seems to have the edge – of 4 country managers, 3 are Ringier appointees (Mrs. Smuclerova for Czech Republic, Mr. Mertus for Slovakia, Mrs. Drakulic-Petrovic for Serbia) and 1 is a Springer appointee (Mrs. Sadokska for Poland). But, Poland is by far the most important country. So, also here Axel Springer seems to be making an above-average contribution.

The question is: how much longer before Axel Springer gets itchy feet?

According to The Washington Post, Certifikid, a DC-based Daily Deals site focused on children’s products, is expected to earn in 2012 more than $350,000 from $2 million worth of Daily Deals sales.   The Post also reported a record February for the site and its teleworking-mom founder Jamie Ratner,  with $100,000 in gross sales for the month. Promotions included gyms, summer camps, haircuts for kids, birthday party packages, and family photography. The top-selling Deal that month was Baltimore Harbor’s Urban Pirates Family.  Certifikid buyers spent nearly $30,000 for that one family outing. Certifikid recently launched a “special needs” focus, with alerts and deals especially for children with special needs. In a video interview with Baltimore’s WBAL TV Ratner talked about her company’s mission to put “special needs” families together, and provide them the outlet they needed.  A Certifkid Cares project offers schools and other organizations a group-referral program that can make up to $1000 for the organization. It all sounds great, doesn’t it? Perhaps not. 

It’s all quite warm and fuzzy, at first glance –  especially since a travel-to-the-office mom was able to turn stay-at-home mom and still make this happen. Our first thought was that local classified and online marketplace publishers could and should seek out local netpreneur wannabes – perhaps even among their staff – to find their niche and get going on a deals site. Perhaps The Washington Post, clearly interested in local and social (see our upcoming CIR coverage of the new Service Alley,) should reach out to Certifikid about collaboration.

What about the local merchants, though? Is anyone watching their revenue backs? We have to wonder. It might well be that these merchants are raking in the big bucks after their Certifikid deals, with consumers returning time and again to pay full price. But given what is clearly Certifikid’s considerable ability to generate local media coverage, the fact that merchant testimonial is nowhere to be found has us thinking otherwise.

So we approached Ratner by email to request a phone conversation. We said we wanted to ask the hard questions – What about the all-too-common complaint from merchants that Daily Deals discount too heavily and then the publishers take another big cut and the merchant takes a financial bath? (Certifkid takes 35 percent.)  All of a sudden Certifikid was not responding to us.  We asked if Certifikid merchants saw customers come back after the discount deal to pay full price later. We got no reply from Certifikid. We asked if merchants came back to repeat their deals. Certifikid did not respond.

The Certifikid.com merchant page espouses its benefits for merchants. “Certifikid has become an online playground for families to build relationships with each other and participating businesses that will last beyond the initial transaction,”  it reads. We’d really like to know if that’s happening. Certifikid is not saying.

Ratner and her staff have talked about how much money they’ve made, and how nice this is for families, but nowhere did we see a conversation about or by the merchants.

No one discussed with any media outlet if this worked for the merchants, and if buyers came back later to pay full price. That’s what we want to know.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote about one local bakery about to launch its first Daily Deal through Certifikid. No medium seems to have checked back to see what it brought that bakery. We will.

That’s the issue we have with Daily Deals. If you don’t take care of the merchants, you won’t have a Daily Deals site after you’ve run out of local merchants to lure to the site for the first time. Of course, that might take awhile (and you might get rich as you head down that road to demise, of course. So if you don’t really care about your local business community, it won’t matter to you ).

Certifikid, according to WPAL, is expanding nationwide. It’s already gone from DC /Baltimore to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Hampton Roads (VA), and all of Delaware. An aggressive and accomplished sales staff should be able to keep this “try-us-once” approach bringing in revenue for quite some time.

This problem isn’t exclusive to Certifikid. Since we’ve been writing about Daily Deals, Certifikid is the first Daily Deals site that declined to speak to us openly about the issue, however. So we have to wonder if the news here is not really very good for the merchants. That ultimately isn’t going to be very good for Certifikid. We’ll be asking the merchants, and we’ll let you know. If we’re wrong and all is rosy here, we’ll say that.

The Daily Deals concept is hot right now, and we still suggest that local classified and online marketplace publishers be the incubator helpers and publishers for local niche-focused netpreneurs. We think the concept is going to crash and burn, but in the meantime there is money to be made, and business relationships to be created. What’s absolutely crucial (and would be a standout in this space) is that publishers take care of their merchants.  Local news publishers with classified verticals and online marketplace products can do that well.  After all, what they can offer these local merchants that others cannot are additional traffic and publication / site resources, and trusted, long-standing community relationships.  Local newspapers and broadcasters might include advertorial coverage as well.

A Daily Deals site has to be a win-win-win (publisher – consumer – merchant) or it’s not going to last beyond this short-term “everybody-create-one” Daily Deals craze. Too many Daily Deals site are forgetting that third win. Its seems that Certifikid might be one of them. We’re going to find out.