Ghost of Midnight

“Local swallows the internet”

From Greg Sterling…

… from a consumer perspective local swallows the Internet. As I tried to explain: Local is actually the biggest thing on the Internet because it’s really about offline transactions. It’s about people using the Internet as a research tool and then buying or transacting in local stores (be they mom and pops or big boxes) or with local service businesses.

Local is about where the money is changing hands. E-commerce is a niche (in terms of relative dollar value [4% of US retail]). Local is also about solving the “last mile problem” of search — getting people from their research online to the cash register (or its equivalent) in the real world.

Case in point, Greg also reports that Zillow.com just raised $30M in another round of investment. Huge sums of money pumping into local online.

UPDATE:  The Local Onliner has more about the Zillow deal…

Zillow has landed $30 million in new financing, which comes on top of the $57 million already raised. The new round values the 155 employee “Z-estimate” provider at $350 million, according to reporting by Rebecca Buckman at The Wall Street Journal.