Five-year-old Yelp has been something of a phenomenon, and is a preferred rating and review directory for millions of people online and mobile in 24 cities. In December, comScore pegged its traffic at 7 million visitors, up from 2.8 million…
One of the homespun stories of interactive local media is the rise of HelloMetro, a city guide company that started in 1999 as an entrepreneurial effort in Louisville, Kentucky, and has since grown to include 15 staffers, including five direct…
Zagat, which publishes consumer reviews and guides for restaurants, nightlife, hotels and attractions, has licensed out its name and reviewer system to WellPoint. The health-care insurer will publish Zagat-branded health reviews for its WellPoint and Anthem Blue Cross customers, reports…
OpenTable, the online restaurant reservation service, has filed an S1 with the SEC to raise $40 million. The company, founded in 1998 by former Citysearch President Thomas Layton, was launched as Easyseats.com. It currently has contracts with 10,000 restaurants in all 50…
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg posts on the Official Google Blog today about a new partnership between the city and Google to launch a series of local search tools. This will include a City Guide site, NYCgo.com, with mapping…
EveryBlock, the six-person Adrian Holovaty “micro-local” project funded to the tune of $1.1 million by the Knight News Challenge, is preparing to go “for profit” when the two-year Knight grant ends in June. The Chicago-based site, always registered as a…
We’ve just announced the lineup for our Marketplaces 2009 conference, which is March 16-18 at the historic (and excellent) Century Plaza in L.A. We hope you find it as compelling as we do. It is probably a “must attend” event by any…
Pegasus News, the Dallas hyperlocal site, was seen as a great model for other markets when Fisher Communications, a leading broadcaster in Seattle and the Northwest, bought the site in July 2007. But the roiled market in broadcasting apparently stifled…
There is still some life in many newspapers, but recent results have encouraged a basic question: What would it be like if newspapers left the scene? Would our information needs be met by NPR? Blogs? The common belief is that we…
Local mobile portals make a lot of sense since most phones (even the iPhone 3G) don’t really lend themselves to much surfing. Another social/viral dimension is added through social networking enhancements via profile pages, Twitter and especially GPS. Two services seem…
Hyperlocal sites aspire to grab headlines from everywhere and be a one-stop for the neighborhood. That’s been accepted practice, providing the site links back to the origination site, and too much copy isn’t exposed. It tends to build traffic for everyone.…
Huffington Post started it, with a local site in Chicago, with promises of many more. Now Playboy is jumping into the local game as well. The news was buried in this week’s news that Christie Hefner was resigning as CEO.…
Citysearch has just completed a full revamp of its product and strategy that it hopes will position it in the long-term battle for local. Elements of the revamp include a more intuitive interface, an embrace of social media, a major…
IAC Vice President Kara Nortman, speaking at Interactive Local Media 2008, provided both a dose of reality and a glimmer of hope about where media companies in the local marketplace are headed. Nortman’s view of what is working well included sites…
Angie's List, the premium, user-paid directory of local business reviews, announced today that it has raised $18 million in new capital from Lighthouse Capital Partners. The site has now raised $66 million in total, including $13 million in 2006 from…
Yelp is often dismissed as a bar and restaurant site for recent college grads in San Francisco. But site usage released by the company suggests it has rather broad usage and shouldn’t be so readily pigeonholed. The site also says…
Local Matters' city guide platform Guidespot (profiled here) has built a local guide for next week's Interactive Local Media conference. It includes lots of things to do, see and eat in Santa Clara (when you're not completely engaged at the…
Marchex, during its 3Q earnings call today, reaffirmed its focus on providing ad solutions for the local and vertical search space, noting that it currently works with 80,000 local advertisers via 110 local partner relationships, including AT&T and Idearc. The…
Mark Cuban, the dot-com entrepreneur who has launched Broadcast.com and HDNet and now has greater renown as the colorful owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has given the entire local ecosystem a big shot in the arm by investing in CitySquares,…
Eventful, which competes with Zvents for leadership (and affiliates) in the fast changing local event marketplace, has just completed a new $10 million C round lead by Telefonica Capital. Also participating are alumni investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Bay…
