Category Archives: Local Search

Outside.In attracts $1M (almost)

Peter Krasilovsky reports today:

Outside.In, the place-blogging site that collects everything that appears on the Web in a geographical context – blogs, traditional media, individual contributions — has won $900,000 of funding… The money will allow the the three co-founders to expand to a staff of ten, add new resources, including a “meet your neighbors” section, and expand internationally. The site currently serves 63 cities and 3,217 neighborhoods.

I’m intrigued by Outside.In. If I understand the site, it attempts to tame the flood of information available on the web (or at least some of it) by lining it up according to place. I’ve tried to register this blog on their system for Burlington, VT and it says I was successful, but then I can’t find any mention of it… I must be missing something.

But more important than my incompetence as a visitor (I wonder how many non-techies will embrace this site?), I looked at some places where I’ve lived in the past that are also well-established Outside.In locations and I’m left with conflicting reactions… (A) wow, cool vs. (B) too much… make it stop! I absorb a lot of media on any given day… not as much as your average hyper-blogger, but way more than most of the John Does I know. And what I’ve seen on Outside.In is a good start, but the information has not been tamed enough. Makes me feel like someone left the tap running. So I should take another look to understand it better.

The Local Onliner goes on to say:

Union Square’s Fred Wilson [one of the investors], in a press release, presents an interesting hypothesis about his latest investment. “The best Web services are two-way systems. They take content in, add something to it, and then send it back out. YouTube works this way. So do Delicious and Flickr. To date, we haven’t seen such a service for local information online. Outside.in will hopefully fill that void.”

Front Porch Forum does this at a neighborhood level with neighbors’ words. We’ve taken in thousands of postings, added value, and put them back out to our neighborhood forums.

On his blog, Wilson has more: “Look at the advertisers who populate the local paper, the Yellow Pages, and the local radio stations. They need a place to go online and when they find it, the dollars that will flow are large, very large. Clearly search will get a big piece of that pie (search always does), but the killer local service is one that can serve the residents and the merchants of a city, town, and neighborhood the way the local paper has in the past.”

We plan to test our sponsorship program in Burlington, Vermont this month. Initial reaction from our members (17% of the city subscribed in our first six months) is encouraging. Those I’ve spoken with don’t see the messages from sponsors as advertising, rather just another message about their neighborhood or side of town. Can I be hopeful and skeptical at the same time?

How many Neighbors does it take to…

I love the Local Onliner! Here’s another interesting post from today. My answer to Peter Krasilovsky’s refrigerator question below… “Yes, Front Porch Forum.”

Krillion, a startup with deep pockets… launched the first iteration of its “localized search engine” today. The highly attractive, ad-supported service is kicking off with a dedicated appliance search… Krillion is crawling national retailer feeds for appliance availability, store location and sales info. Retailers include Home Depot, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Ikea, Sears (and in the Bay Area, Orchard Supply Hardware). In addition to providing very good product and price information, Krillion provides a click-to-call capability.

Competitors such as ShopLocal, Yokel, Nearby Now and CNET provide similar services. ShopLocal, for one, would seem to have more data sources, since it sucks in all the retailer info from its newspaper partners; Run of Press and circular ads; as well as from a Web partnership with shopping.com.

For now, Krillion says its crawling is far more extensive than any of its competitors, with 275 million pages of relevant local search results displaying local product information for major appliances in every burg in the U.S.  “It is an important piece of the local search puzzle,” says [former RHD executive Simon] Greenman. He adds that most local results are like “Swiss cheese.” Greenman also says that the focus on national retailers is smart since the focus stays on big ticket items, and “you get scale issues when you go local.”

But a question I ask is: isn’t there a way to feature both the big box stores and the local merchants? Sure, Krillion turns up an impressive number of GE Profile refrigerators from several big box stores. ShopLocal, meanwhile, only turns up one (from AM Royal). But one of the biggest (and cheapest) stores in my hometown of Carlsbad,CA is actually Pacific Sales. They advertise heavily in local papers. Can’t someone find it?

Front Porch Forum’s answer? Ask your neighbors! Questions like this get asked all the time on our neighborhood forums. “Where’s the best place to buy a new refrigerator?” The writer will hear about the local versions of Pacific Sales, along with comments about service and other issues he might not be considering… “look at the Energy Star ratings” or “check out RecycleNorth for great deals on slightly used models.” Or, even… “ask for the manager, Herb, and tell him I sent you.”

Sure, research online, but then ask the neighbors and SHOP LOCAL! (By the way, that means locally owned retailers.)