Web 2.0 Summit The Edge Next Door: Web 2.0 Comes to Your Town Chris Tolles CEO & Co-Founder [email_address]

Web 2.0 Insular

The (Local) Audience is Listening Small town America is catching up 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 urban suburban rural Home broadband penetration by community type

The Market Total US Local Advertising Dollars (2007): $97B Total US Local Online Advertising Dollars (billions): 2006 $2.1 2007 $2.9 2008 $4.6 2009 $5.6 2010 $6.8 2011 $7.8

One Problem There is no “Local” market San Francisco is Local Columbia Kentucky is Local “ Local” is the aggregation of 32,500 places (for the US) 32,500 separate markets 32,500 separate audiences On the web, no one’s looking for “Local”

Crossing the Chasm Two Approaches Beach Head Flood Fill Long time to get nationwide Hard to boot up at all Craigslist, 1995, 300+ cities Newspapers, 1685, 1,460 US cities Citysearch, 1995, 138 cities Yelp, 2004, 160 US cities Coverage Strong Standalone Areas Available Everywhere

Art of the Start

Kicking and Screaming 51% of traffic, 10% of content in 2004 We didn’t set out to do “Local” Boring Not our core competency Nobody else had it We Launched an Aggregated News Site in 2004

Uh Oh The Problem Not enough local content 1,440 Local daily papers 2,303 News radio stations 1,686 Television stations X 6 3 4 X X 8,640 6,909 6,744 22,293 Number of populated ZIP codes in US Total number of local stories per day 32,500 Original Local Stories Insight Local News is not a search problem

If You Want Something Done… Could we create it ourselves? Topix 2006 5 Million Unique Visitors 2.3 pageviews per visitor We added the ability to comment on stories 12 Million Unique Visitors 20 pageviews per commenter Most active areas in small communities Topix 2007

Your News, Your Town, Your Take

We’re Getting Traction

Things are Different in America

Web 2.0 in Anytown USA Comments in 19,868 towns Daily activity in over 1,500 cities Game On. 70k posts per day 60% of traffic on commentary 60% of comments original There’s a Big Opportunity Here Investments like the $55M ReachLocal got last week AmericanTowns Outside.in Placeblogger $7.8B market by 2011 Investment and Partnerships with 3 largest US newspapers

The Edge is the Middle