Category Archives: Local Reviews
Judy’s Book RIP
I just learned from TechCrunch that Judy’s Book is dead…
We just got word from Judy’s Book founder and CEO Andy Sacks that the Seattle startup will be shutting down operations, and most of the staff of twelve was let go today. The company had raised a total of $10.5 million over two rounds of financing. Judy’s Book started off as a community driven review site for local businesses, but changed it’s focus in 2006 when the original model looked to be failing. The company de-focused on local reviews, and went more towards the shopping angle and local deals.
Other players in the local review space have fallen in the last year, too. Intuit shut down Zipingo last summer, and Insider Pages sold for little more than the capital it originally raised to CitySearch. Yelp is still standing and reportedly doing well, although fierce competition from Yahoo and Google as well as younger startups is looming.
Front Porch Forum does a booming business in our pilot community with local reviews… but with a very different take.
Marchex Marching through Local Online
An interesting article in the Business 2.0 finale this month about Marchex.
Marchex CEO Russell Horowitz is launching websites for thousands of cities, big and small. The play? To beat Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo to the punch in connecting businesses to nearby customers.
With smart people, powerful tools, and hundreds of millions of dollars behind it, I’m sure that this effort will produce something of value… in fact it already has. But I wonder about “soul”…
Marchex is having a hard time selling its vision. Since so many of its sites sat idle for so long, packed with nothing but ads, Marchex looked like a giant domain play except with much higher overhead. But the company has been developing new technologies. And in June, Marchex lit up 100,000 of its sites – with another 150,000 or so to go – changing them into destinations with a smattering of content and reviews. The goal is to create sites that, as Horowitz puts it, “have a soul.”
In May 2006, for example, Marchex bought a review site called OpenList, a local guide that pulls together reviews for restaurants, hotels, and local attractions. The company then developed software that crawls the Web, sorts out duplicate content, and then generates a review. Look up San Francisco’s Hotel Triton on BayAreaHotels.com, for instance, and the software-generated write-up reads like a Zagat guide: “What travelers said they loved: ‘The location,’ ‘the staff,’ and ‘the room.’ Guests can enjoy yoga and other local activities.” Users add their own reviews too.
Hmm…
Ask your Community vs. Find it Yourself
Greg Sterling writes today about social networks as a way to cut through the tangle of information on the web…
Community is something of an antidote to these phenomena. Community has definite limitations and flaws but it also offers a way to navigate the sea of too many choices online.
We’ve been talking about this with Front Porch Forum for some time. Seems like there are two kinds of people in the world… those who think there are two kinds of people and those who don’t. 😉 Whoops…
Another two kinds… people who live and breathe online and those who use it as a tool when needed. Advanced users jump all over the growing mass of online services to find whatever, whenever. The rest of us would just as soon ask some real and familiar/trusted people… “does anybody know where I can get X?”
Reminds me of the old male-female stereotype about asking for driving directions.
LifeAt – Social Networking in Residential Buildings
TechCrunch reported today…
New York-based LifeAt
wants to create a social network around your residential building. Do you need one? Nope. But maybe you’ll use it anyway. And perhaps you’ll even get to know some of your neighbors. The building managers control the network and post information about the building itself. Residents sign up to get news about the building, interact with other users, etc.
LifeAt is in the ballpark. Front Porch Forum knows all about the demand for neighborhood-level online service. Time will tell if they’ve got it right.
Smalltown buys Local2Me
Smalltown announced today that it just bought Local2Me. Here are some of the reports about it…
As I’ve written in the past, I admire Smalltown’s narrow and deep focus on their initial five California towns. Local2Me is in the same geographic area as Smalltown. From Local2Me founder Michael Olivier…
The Local2Me service launched in 2000, and over the last seven years community members have posted over 31,000 neighborhood messages in 90 towns about wide-ranging topics, from great pediatric dentists to Halloween costumes for sale, trustworthy appliance repair, neighborhood crime issues, anti-raccoon measures, and more!
Each of these services has some similarities to Front Porch Forum. Although it’s probably more apples to oranges than anything, FPF had about 15,000 messages in its first year operating in one small metro area (including 19 towns).
“Neighborhoods Online” gets a Look by MediaPost
Kathleen Burge writes in OMMA this week about several neighborhood-level online efforts. She includes FatDoor, BackFence, eNeighbors, MeetTheNeighbors, and Front Porch Forum. The conclusion… full of potential, but two big problems… (1) generating sufficient revenue, and (2) scaling and adjusting the formula that works in San Francisco so that it plays in Peoria. Worth a read.
Most Trusted Source? The Envelope Please…
Greg Sterling summarizes recent studies that ask about the most trust source of information…
Front Porch Forum deals with lots of word-of-mouth. I differentiate between word-of-mouth from anonymous strangers (most review sites) and word-of-mouth from a clearly identified person with whom you have a connection. With FPF, the recommendations come from clearly identified nearby neighbors.
And from the eMarketer Newsletter…
Local Online Growing, Growing, Growing
Seems like the word is getting out about “local online.” Some recently reported developments…
Greg Sterling takes a look at “mommy sites”… lots of them popping up all over. Some of these are similar to Front Porch Forum… very local and talk about whatever (not just reviews or just classifieds).
Marketers and local businesses should consider some of these mom sites in their thinking about targeting local audiences and in terms of “online word of mouth.” While it’s considerably more challenging to market within online communities, a little time and attention to some of these sites could pay off in a meaningful way. Regardless of whether marketers pay attention to them, these mom networks are in fact driving lots of recommendations and business referrals all over the US. It’s very much an untold story in local.
Bill Day writes for Marchex a post titled “Building relevant and useful sites for neighborhoods.”
How do you cover a landscape as fragmented and targeted as the 42,000+ neighborhoods/ZIP codes that exist in the U.S.? And what needs to be done locally versus done centrally to ensure a solid consumer experience? As a company that owns ZIP Code Web sites covering most of the U.S., we are dealing directly with the challenges and opportunities that come with building highly relevant and useful local sites covering each of the ZIPs.
Hmm… a ZIP Code is interesting, but too crude of a cut. Just in my own experience I’ve lived in ZIPs that feel like home, others that feel disjointed and jerrymandered. And they change. Does that mean the “neighborhood” changes too? Perhaps a techie’s solution to a human challenge. Who knows?
ReachLocal, a provider of local online marketing solutions for SMBs, has raised $55.2 million in new financing. This comes on top of the $12.7 million it has raised since its founding in 2004. The new funds give ReachLocal an estimated valuation of $305 million, since it was previously valued at $250 million.
That’s a lot of money. Reminds me of Big Tent… social networking for soccer moms. And Ning… DIY social networking. Both of which I believe have huge sums of investment.
Finally, Cameron Ferroni on the Marchex blog seems to agree with my assessment that the local online space is getting both broad and deep…
There is so much data out there that some set of consumers will love, and others will think is irrelevant. Deciding how to bring it all together and get consumers excited – now that is the challenge.
CitySquares lands $1M; Version 2.0 imminent
Peter Krasilovsky reports about CitySquares‘ latest developments…
neighborhood-centric directory of local businesses has got about $1 million in venture funding; almost 400 advertisers paying roughly $600 a year, mostly for “deluxe” business profiles; and an 88 percent renewal rate.
They seem to be getting some traction, and they’re going places…
In mid-October, CitySquares is going to re-launch using new neighborhood slicing-and-dicing capabilities from Urban Mapping and Localeze, all based on an open-source Drupal platform. The site is also confidently planning to expand beyond Boston, with another northeast city set for Q2 2008, and a third one for Q3.
Co-Founder Ben Saren says the site’s re-do reflects a key truism: hyperlocal is about neighborhoods, but the reality is that neighborhoods are often “in-between” other neighborhoods. The new version of the site is going to present searchers with the five closest neighborhoods, as well as proximity options. “They can be five miles or ten blocks,” he says. That’s the Localeze part of it.
They’ll also identify neighborhoods within neighborhoods, such as Observatory Hill, which is a section of Cambridge. That’s the Urban Mapping part of it. The ability to sell across neighborhoods will help sell ads for the many small businesses “in between.”
About Blog
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
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