Local consumers are looking beyond pure search when they are looking for family fun. That’s the unmet need that Boston-based Goby.com is trying to meet in its 350-category, events and family fun search site. The site is now reaching 500,000…
Local food festivals (“Taste of Seattle,” “Taste of Hillcrest,” et al) are a great way to taste samples from many restaurants at one time. Usually, they require a single ticket, with proceeds often going to charity. A more recent phenomenon…
India’s auto classifieds marketplace is heating up, as the country’s burgeoning middle class becomes more auto dependent. In August 2009, MotorExchange acquired CarTradeIndia.com, apparently leading to investment in MotorExchange by Canaan Partners. Now, Axel Springer, the German media company, and…
SB Nation (Sports Blog Nation) presents a fan-centric, highly verticalized (i.e., local) view of sports from dozens of bloggers. The site has completed a new $10.5 million "C" round of funding, pushing it past the $23.5 million mark. The new…
With the rise of consumer-facing real estate sites such as Realtor.com, Zillow and Trulia, it seems only natural that Multiple Listing Services would break out from behind the Realtor and brokerage firewalls, and provide truly local, for-profit real estate sites,…
Avvo, the Seattle-based vertical site that launched its lawyer ratings service in 2007, has now added doctor ratings, using the proceeds, in part, from a $10 million raise it did in March. In launching a doctors site, it goes head…
AutoTrader.com is paying a reported $500 million to acquire the assets of Kelley Blue Book. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2010. On the surface, the acquisition of KBB is fairly straightforward. While AutoTrader provides its…
Scheduling is seen as the next wave of online marketplace services for SMBs, encouraging sticky usage, premium features and, in some cases, highly contextual advertising. Scheduling vendors such as Agendize, Full Slate, MaxiPage and X Time are actively syndicating solutions.…
SeniorChecked.com, a Washington D.C.-area start-up targeting the $3 trillion elder-care market officially launched today. The company is working to develop SeniorChecked into a national symbol for seniors and their families to find trusted local service providers that are screened through…
Zillow, after five years and $87 million raised, says it is now in the black for the first time, after focusing more on revenues. It also announced that Spencer Rascoff has been appointed CEO, replacing Expedia Founder Rich Barton, who…
Appointments are seen as the next frontier of e-commerce and advertising, as online and mobile-centric consumers increasingly look for the immediacy of booking electronically. The appointment space is a competitive one, however, as several companies jump on the opportunity --…
Classifieds haven’t been especially enhanced by mobile apps -- although it is nice to have them on the go when shopping for a car or a house. But Oodle keeps pushing the envelope with its effort to bring the world…
High school sports have been the centerpiece of many hyperlocal efforts. They bring to the table highly passionate fans, families and players in the hard-to-reach 12- to 17-year-old demo. But the economics of school-by-school efforts don’t always work, whether for…
Redbeacon, the six-person San Francisco-based service referral company, announced today that it has raised a heady $7.4 million in Series A financing from Mayfield Fund and Venrock. CEO and Cofounder Ethan Anderson tells us that the company needed such a…
College students are a rich market for local businesses in college towns. Indeed, advertising has become more important to local SMBs as colleges increasingly compete for the business and try to keep students (and their money) on campus. CampusLive, the…
Restaurants are among the top categories for group buying deals. Now OpenTable, the restaurant reservations service, is getting in on the game. On its blog today, OpenTable announced that it is launching a weekly “Spotlight” offer that provides diners with…
We're taking part in a good webinar next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific dedicated to the acquisition and retention of vertical classified advertisers. The webinar is hosted by ATG, which provides a wide range of commerce tools for SMBs. I…
The 360-degree views of real estate listings were remarkable for their time, but are giving way to new technology that lets users look at many things at once, says Microsoft Live Labs Technical Fellow Gary Flake, who was speaking last…
Realtor.com has gotten 1.3 million downloads of its iPhone app, which launched in January. “It is the fastest growing app in the category,” President Errol Samuelson told Inman Real Estate Connect attendees in San Francisco last week. “The content is…
Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman told Inman Real Estate Connect attendees in San Francisco yesterday that his “customer first” brokerage is likely to be in 16 markets by year-end 2010. The site is currently in 12 markets and employs 100 agents.…