Zvents received $7M in funding in November. More:
San Mateo, CA (PRNewswire) November 7, 2006 — Zvents, the leading local event search technology firm, announced today that it has secured $7 million in series A financing led by VantagePoint Venture Partners… The funding will be used to expand Zvents’ geographic coverage to major metro areas across the United States, and to grow its technical and business staff.
Founded in March 2005… the company has developed the Zvents Media Platform… that provides next-generation local search and targeted advertising capabilities for local web publishers… The platform was launched with the San Jose Mercury News in July 2006, and has since rolled out with the Denver Post, Miami Herald, and Contra Costa Times. Forthcoming 2006 metro launches include Boston and greater Los Angeles.
Further…
“Local is a huge growth area on the Internet today, for both relevant content and targeted advertising,” said David Carlick, Managing Director at VantagePoint Venture Partners. “Zvents’ search, content, and advertising solutions are enormously valuable to media firms looking for ways to become more relevant to their audience, and better monetize their content.”
Dot.com titans are hard at work to tie into the millions of small and medium businesses (SMB or SME) in the United States. I recall a Business 2.0 article that pegged the Yellow Pages as a $15B/year industry… that’s all paper, not online. And Peter Krasilovsky reported today about Google’s efforts to provide micro-websites to potentially millions of small businesses that otherwise have nothing to link to (and therefore can’t buy advertising space from Google).
Google’s head of SME product development, Dan Rubenstein, speaking at The Kelsey Group’s ILM event in Philadelphia, said that Google is going to meet SMEs halfway to get them to actively market themselves on the Internet. Google is developing several new products specifically with SMEs in mind (and may have quietly launched them).
First, it is rolling out microsites to help the SMEs that don’t have a website but want to advertise on Google – a group that potentially represents at least 50 percent of the 12 million + SMEs in the U.S with ad budgets. Without a URL and website to link to, of course, ad campaigns on Google are highly limiting.
Rubenstein noted that SMEs would have at least five templates to choose from.
Front Porch Forum’s sponsorship program (under development) is aimed at the micro-to-small end of the business spectrum, and, therefore, we’re expecting that few will have a web presence, nor care to have one. The three-man roofing contractor, the neighborhood daycare, the one-woman tax preparer, the corner store and autoshop. They’ll be able to advertise very cheaply in one or more neighborhoods in one-month increments. We haven’t really started talking about this publically yet and already two dozen businesses joined our waiting list. And since it’s nearby businesses sponsoring the surrounding neighborhood forums, there’s less need for each small enterprise to have a website… just “Special this week at Jerry’s Gulf this month: $20 oil change for members of this neighborhood forum.” And everybody knows that Jerry’s is up on the corner. Stay tuned!
Rob Maurizi just forwarded this piece from Time magazine (Europe Edition) by Grant Rosenberg about Peuplade:
Just two months old, Peuplade enables users to find like-minded Parisians in their own neighborhood, or even their own building, to schedule a range of activities, including after-work drinks, jogging groups and block parties. Already some 40,000 people have signed up and participated in more than 1,100 events around town. A rollout in other French cities is planned soon.
That’s an amazing start! Rosenberg goes on:
Beyond recreation and socializing, the site also promotes exchanging small services like babysitting and visiting isolated senior citizens. “In Paris, we don’t have the habit of really knowing our neighbors,” explains one of Peuplade’s founders, Nathan Stern, a sociologist by training. “Our website is about establishing community interaction not based on looks, background or politics, but by virtue of being nearby.”
That last quote could be said for Front Porch Forum too. Now where did I leave my college French? Peuplade looks impressive, but it’s impenatrable to the likes of my English-speaking self.
Peter Krasilovsky reviewed Tom Grubisch’s new article on local online efforts today:
Community networks, or “we networks,” are so poorly used that they tend to really be “me networks.” That’s the gist of a new article in Annenberg’s Online Journalism Review by Tom Grubisch, who revisits the subject a little more than a year after first looking into it.
A person need not search too hard to find such services that seem a mile wide and an inch deep. Grubisch’s piece devotes a few paragraphs each to ten examples of local citizen journalism sites. iBattleboro gets a decent review (gotta love those crazy Green Mountain boys and girls), but not so for most of the others.
This brings to mind (hold on, this is a stretch) the first years of minivan production. Some manufacturers started with the tried and true full-size van or pickup truck and nipped it down to a slightly smaller version. Others started with a car chasis and built it up. On the surface the two minivan types appeared very similar, but, of course, they were quite different… one drove like a truck, the other more like a station wagon. Ultimately, a new creature evolved, borrowing from both approaches… a true minivan. It’s now part of the automobile landscape.
So, to local online efforts… some are mini-versions of something much bigger and beefier, e.g., Backfence, which looks like a local online newspaper. Others approach from a grassroots level, where the content is intended for a few hundred households, more a neighborhood newsletter… Front Porch Forum is coming from that angle.
Are these both “minivans” or two different things? The first tends more toward citizen journalism, the latter toward community-building within neighborhoods. Will the two approaches converge? Will one or more of these models become part of the “permanent” online landscape?
I tend to think that journalism requires professionals at its core, but the volunteer bloggers and online others provide a great service in keeping the pros honest and on their toes (and more). So, for my local news, I prefer a mix of local professional outlets and citizen efforts.
On the tiny end of the scale, most people want to know what’s happening on their block, and the only people who can deliver that content are their neighbors. Early success of Front Porch Forum and other neighborhood-level services seems to back that up.
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more