BlueGlass Interactive Points The Way – Local Search Next?

Just saw this release that Chris Winfield, Dave Snyder, Brent Csutoras, Jordan Kasteler, Loren Baker, Tony Wang and Danielle Winfield along with their colleagues at their various companies have joined forces to form Blueglass, a full service Internet Marketing agency.

This may not mean much to my readers in the local search world, but each of these people is the equivalent of a rock star in the search marketing world.  In search marketing consulting there are a few types of companies – big agencies, small/midsized agencies and individual consultants.  Since the market has been growing so fast smaller and sometimes even bigger agencies often share and refer work to each other.  There’s just not enough expertise/hands/hours in the day in any one shop to fulfill demand.

While there will always be a place for big agencies I have found that many clients want to work with smaller, more focused shops to get hands-on experience from people who do this stuff all day long.  But I think those times are changing.  By merging so much firepower into one shop Blueglass is probably formalizing what already were several informal working partnerships. Now instead of competing against each other the partners can share the wealth and provide a compelling service to larger clients who want to work with a “big” company.

I think we are going to see this kind of consolidation over the next year at all levels of the search marketing food chain.  Many of us in the business are all coopetitioning with each other.  These kinds of mergers are ways to get more coop and less petition out these arrangements.

And the reason I am talking about this is because I think the same thing should be happening in local search too.

Oh, and congrats to Chris, Dave, Jordan and all the rest.  See you out on the circuit.