The Smalltown Blog

Webcard™ Listing ROI

Smalltown has been in business long enough that we can now start to generate some meaningful statistics about the usage of Webcard listings.

Smalltown customers who are coming up for their annual renewal this month are receiving an average of 1,240 "views" per year. At first glance, that might not sound like an impressive number of views. But consider these factors and you'll understand why our customer renewal rate is so high:

Each view is uniquely valuable.

We define a "view" as the event when a user clicks on a Webcard to open it. That means the click isn't recorded until the user has decided to get more information after reviewing the basic information on the Webcard - an expression of true interest. There is much more customer engagement on an open Webcard than there is on a common html page view. In fact, the average time spent on an opened Webcard is about 2 full minutes. That's a long average for one to spend on a typical online business listing for barbers, plumbers and pizza parlors, where a large percentage of the users are just quickly looking up a phone number or address.

Our local search is more precise than the big guys.

Smalltown is truly local, so our audience is inherently smaller. Remember, though, that being local also means we are highly targeted and unpolluted by other ad models, like Google SEM or elaborate, expensive SEO strategies designed to push listings to the top of page one. The users who click on a Smalltown Webcard listing typically live in the neighborhood. If one is searching for "jewelry store" in San Mateo, Smalltown delivers information about jewelry stores in San Mateo; not Google optimized crazy SEO stuff like "San Mateo Jewelry Store, Find Jewelry Stores in Your Area, Search by Category/Name www.areaguides.net" (A real example.)

Smalltown Webcards have an awesome ROI.

An opened Webcard view costs the average Webcard owner a remarkably low $0.39! Anyone who has used AdWords, or advertised on other local sites like Yelp or Citysearch knows this is a tremendous online marketing value.

- Hal Rucker

 

Smalltown Welcomes Nick Ordon

Smalltown® Grows Management Team as Service Expands Nationally

Online Local Advertising Platform Provider Appoints Nick Ordon as President and CEO

San Mateo, CA – June 30, 2008 – Smalltown, the company redefining online local advertising through technical innovation, today expanded its management team with the appointment of Nick Ordon as President and CEO. Founder Hal Rucker will remain with the company as Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer, overseeing new product development. Robert Goldberg, a seasoned technology executive and venture capital investor, also joined Smalltown's board of directors.

As CEO, Ordon will capitalize on the momentum generated by last month's launch of Webcards.com, an advertising platform that enables small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) to effectively promote and manage their online presence across the Internet without having to produce multiple campaigns in different formats on a variety of platforms.

"I'm very excited to welcome Nick and Robert to our team," said Hal Rucker. "The addition of their collective experience in a variety of leadership roles comes at an ideal time for Smalltown, and their proven operational and business development skills will free me to focus on guiding our team's design of ground breaking new products that empower our customers."

Nick Ordon comes to Smalltown with more than twenty years of public and private company senior executive experience, most notably as CEO of Versant Corporation (NASDAQ: VSNT), the worldwide leader in specialized data management software, where he spent eight years. More recently, Ordon was CEO of venture-backed firms Infotone and Grayboxx. He held numerous executive positions with Hewlett Packard and Lotus Development earlier in his career.

Robert Goldberg joins Smalltown's board with experience both as an operating executive with NBCi and Looksmart, and as a Managing Director at Idealab. Goldberg was a board member and investor in several pioneering online and local companies, including Insider Pages, Snap and ClickShift.

"I was very much drawn to Smalltown's approach to local using Webcard listings, and the unique vision of the team that designed the platform," said Ordon. "I am a strong believer that Webcards.com is exactly the right solution at the right time for SMBs who want to create or strengthen their Web presence. Smalltown's technology will allow our partners to capitalize on the vibrant small business ecosystem that is emerging on the Internet."

"I've been involved with a number of companies trying to figure out how to effectively penetrate the massive opportunity in local. Smalltown has benefited from the lessons learned in these companies and has cracked the code on cost-effective customer acquisition and monetization," said Goldberg. "Hal and Nick are leading a very innovative and pragmatic team. I'm thrilled to be a part of it."

Designed to serve as a single entryway from which small businesses can efficiently manage all their online marketing, Smalltown's Webcard™ universal business listings allow the creation of an instant, portable Web presence that is indexed by the popular search engines. Webcard™ listings can contain text, photos, videos, coupons, maps and hyperlinks, and soon will deliver more features specifically designed for the SMB community. When merchants make changes to their Webcard™ listing, those changes are instantly reflected wherever the Webcard™ listing appears on the Internet.

About Smalltown
Co-founders Hal Rucker and Mark Jenkins had a vision for how they could make it easier to find the things people need in their own neighborhood using the Internet, at the same time simplifying online marketing for local merchants and service providers. They set off to build an online advertising platform with national reach for the "local" marketplace. Launched in 2005 and funded by Formative Ventures (www.formative.com), Smalltown is privately held and headquartered in San Mateo, California. The company operates six Smalltown hyperlocal Websites in the San Francisco Bay Area and is scaling nationally with www.webcards.com, building an integrated one-stop online advertising and marketing solution for small and medium sized businesses. Visit www.webcards.com to make a Webcard™ listing. For more information, visit Smalltown at www.smalltown.com.

BTW: Here are some new Webcards this week:

Christopher Scott Homes
http://www.smalltown.com/webcards/card/321466

The Buttery Bakery
http://www.smalltown.com/webcards/card/321431

Zrii - The Original Amalaki
http://www.smalltown.com/sancarlos/zrii

REV International Consultancy Group
http://www.smalltown.com/webcards/card/337148

The Collective Antiques of San Mateo
http://www.smalltown.com/sanmateo/collective

Innovate Group, LLC
http://www.smalltown.com/webcards/card/336950

24HourWebCash.com/geisen5219
http://www.smalltown.com/webcards/card/329893

Dover Dental
http://www.smalltown.com/webcards/card/321488

- Hal Rucker

 

Hiring: Senior Software Engineer

Smalltown is looking for a senior software engineer who has a passion for building innovative rich Internet applications. Send your resume to jobs@smalltown.com if you think you're a good match for the position, and please forward this opportunity to anyone you think would be interested.

Thanks!

Download smalltown_senior_engineer.pdf

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Smalltown, Inc

210 S B Street | San Mateo, CA | 94401 | jobs@smalltown.com

SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Are you an experienced software developer with an interest in cutting edge user interface design? Do you have experience developing a public Web application using Adobe Flash, ActionScript, CSS and HTML? Do you have deep experience with object-oriented design patterns and graphical user interface development? And do you enjoy working in a startup environment?

Smalltown, a VC-funded company located in downtown San Mateo, CA is looking for a senior developer to join us in building innovative Rich Internet Applications. This is an exciting opportunity to join an established early-stage startup, and to add your signature to the architecture and design of the Smalltown solution.

Applicants must thrive as a member of a small focused team, be passionate about the promise of next-generation Internet applications, and be comfortable working collaboratively with a user interface team that’s pushing the envelope of Web application design. If you’re interested in playing a lead role in the construction of a next-generation Internet application, please contact us with your resume.

REQUIREMENTS:

o Strong experience with object-oriented software design patterns, in any language
o Experience with client-side web development (CSS, HTML, JavaScript, AJAX)
o Experience with rich-client user interface development (Flash / ActionScript, Java Swing, Motif / X11, OpenLaszlo, Mac/Windows client apps, or similar)
o Experience with Flash 8 / ActionScript 2
o Experience building and operating public internet applications
o BS or MS in Computer Science

NICE TO HAVES:

o Expertise with object-oriented Flash using the MTASC open source compiler
o Experience building server-connected, data-driven Flash applications
o Experience with data transfer and synchronization issues between a Flash application and Java middleware
o Experience using Java middleware (Tomcat / Spring / Hibernate or Apple WebObjects)

 

ComBots RoboGames in San Francisco

OFF TOPIC: RoboGames is coming to San Francisco!

If you liked watching BattleBots on TV, you'll love watching the same level of robotic competition at RoboGames.

RoboGames!
The world's largest robot show!

Date:	Fri, June 13th, 12-7 Sat, June 14th, 12-10 Sun, June 15, 12-7
Where:	Fort Mason, San Francisco Map & directions
Cost:	$20, $10/kids 7-17

Smalltown: http://www.smalltown.com/sanmateo/card/320999

Here are links to a couple robots I've built in the past for this competition:

Crazy Susan: http://rucker.com/crazysusan/index.shtml

Buster Photos: http://homepage.mac.com/hrucker/buster/PhotoAlbum12.html

Buster Video: http://homepage.mac.com/hrucker/buster/iMovieTheater19.html

- Hal Rucker

Webcards.com Coverage

Coverage of our launch of Webcards.com

InternetNews.com http://snipurl.com/internetnews
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3747011

Smart Biz: http://snipurl.com/smartbiz
http://www.smartbiz.com/article/view/2429/?utm_source=&utm_medium=newsfeed

Entreprenuer.com: http://snipurl.com/entrep
http://entrepreneur.com/blog.html?id=193934

Smallbiztechnology.com: http://snipurl.com/smallbiztech
http://smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2008/05/beyond-traditional-web-sites-o.html

The Deal.com: http://snipurl.com/dailydeal
http://www.thedeal.com/techconfidential/vc-ratings/vc-ratings/smalltown-extends-first-round.php

TechCrunch: http://snipurl.com/tcrunch
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/13/smalltowns-webcards-no-longer-just-hyper-local/#comments

VentureBeat: http://snipurl.com/vbeat
http://venturebeat.com/2008/05/13/smalltown-expands-its-scope-to-the-internet-community-at-large-with-webcardscom/

Webcard video and testimonials: http://www.webcards.com/webcards-testimonials.html

Webcards SiteMap: http://www.webcards.com/webcards-sitemap.html

Webcard Directory: http://www.webcards.com/webcards-directory.html

 

Big Announcement for Smalltown

I'm very excited to write that today we unveiled the next phase of Smalltown's growth: the launch of Webcards.com.

Webcards.com is a site where anyone can go to make a Webcard™ listing, even if there isn't a Smalltown hyper local site in their town yet. Why would small business owners want to make a Webcard listing when there isn't a Smalltown site in their community? Two reasons:

1. Traditional websites simply are not the best online solution for small businesses. Webcard listings are a new type of Web presence tailored to their unique needs. They are easy to make, easy to change, affordable and include built-in functionality merchants don't have the time or resources to build themselves. And just like a traditional website, Webcard listings have unique urls and are indexed by the popular search engines.

2. Webcard listings are "portable". This means they can be embedded into other websites such as IYPs, ad networks, local verticals, social networking sites and so on. Best of all, if users change their Webcard listings in one place, that change is instantly made everywhere the Webcard listing is published.

Isn't this a departure from Smalltown's focus on local websites with deep local content?

Webcards.com has always been in our plans for kick-starting the expansion of Smalltown's into hundreds of other communities across the country. Remember that classic local chicken-and-egg problem… Which came first, the content or the visitors? We say "content comes first". We'll monitor Webcards.com to identify hot spots of Webcard listing activity, and use that data to inform us about where to launch the next Smalltown sites. For example, Webcards.com might identify a certain zip code that has at least two Webcard listings in every category, and then we'll launch a Smalltown hyper local website in that region, which is pre-loaded with rich local content.

Please visit www.webcards.com to learn more.

Here's the press release supporting today's announcement:

Smalltown® Launches Webcards.com to Simplify Online Advertising and Marketing for Small Businesses

Webcard™ Universal Business Listings Are Portable Websites That Are Easy to Publish Anywhere on the Internet

San Mateo, CA — May 13, 2008 — Smalltown, the company redefining online local advertising through technical innovations, today unveiled Webcards.com, where local merchants can go to create Webcard™ listings to promote their businesses across the Internet without having to produce multiple campaigns in different formats on a variety of platforms. Webcard listings, which are a hybrid of yellow page ads and multimedia websites, can work on their own or be embedded into other Web pages. When merchants make changes to their Webcard listing, the changes are instantly reflected everywhere on the Internet the Webcard listing appears.

"Merchants typically do not have the time, money or resources to build the features required to get value out of traditional websites," said Hal Rucker, founder and CEO of Smalltown. "So we created a totally new type of portable Web presence tailored to their unique needs. We’re building a critical piece of the online advertising ecosystem that will enable a small business owner to make a single Webcard listing and use it everywhere, whether it’s as a stand-alone website, a banner ad, a mobile ad, an interactive gadget ad, or a multimedia addition to a Facebook page or yellow pages directory. After working with hundreds of our customers in six pilot towns to optimize the features that work best for them, we’re excited to offer Webcard listings to small business owners everywhere."

"After more than a decade of the Internet it's surprising that developing an effective online presence is still such a challenge for small businesses," said Greg Sterling, principal, Sterling Market Intelligence and Program Director of Local Mobile Search. "The launch of Webcards.com, combined with their syndication to local sites and the broader Internet, offers an appealing solution to that problem."

Easy to Create Once, Publish Anywhere, Change Often

Webcards.com includes a step-by-step publishing tool called the Webcard™ Factory. In as few as ten minutes, merchants can create a customized, affordable Webcard listing with video, photo galleries, coupons, formatted text and reporting. Future functionality will include call tracking, appointment calendars and outbound audio messages.

Each Webcard listing has a unique Web address, and they are indexed by Google, Yahoo! and other popular search engines. Once created, it only takes seconds to make modifications and promote new content such as daily specials, upcoming events, coupons and sales.

"We had a website before we got our Webcard," said Wendy Narlock of The Spa Studio. "The great thing about our Webcard is that we can so easily change our coupon and try out different ideas for promotions. Plus, our Webcard has paid for its one-year subscription price within the first two months."

In connection with the Webcards.com launch, Smalltown is announcing integration with three companies that will showcase Webcard universal business listings: YellowPagesLive, Trulia and WebVisible. The company anticipates additional key partnership announcements in the months ahead.

"The whole point of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and online advertising is to lead potential customers to a compelling destination so they will take actions with the business," said Carey Ransom, VP of Sales and Marketing at WebVisible. "About half of small businesses don’t have websites, and those that do have difficulty changing them. Smalltown’s Webcard listings are an innovation the market has needed for a long time because they are such a great source of current and local merchant generated content. Webcards are a compelling destination to drive online and search engine advertising campaigns."

See the rest of the press release at Webcards.com.

Here are a couple Webcards made at Webcards.com

Snappy Wellness: http://www.smalltown.com/webcards/snappywellness
Boss Glass Artists: http://www.smalltown.com/webcards/boss

- Hal Rucker

 

New Webcard™ Creation Wizard Launched Today

We launched our first town in Burlingame, California in October, 2006. Smalltown hyper local websites are currently in 5 additional pilot towns where we continue to test and improve our products and services by talking to our customers.

Based on that real world feedback, today we launched a refined version of the Webcard Wizard used to create Webcard™ listings. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to create a compelling local Web presence, and we made two significant improvements:

Immediate Gratification: First time users simply enter some information about their business, upload one photo and write a one paragraph description. Then, when they get to the WYSIWYG editor, they see their basic Webcard listing "automagically" created. We found that this helps ease their uneasiness about how to get started, and boosts their confidence to add new features and rich content.

An Edit/Preview Toggle: We implemented a more intuitive way for users to switch between edit and preview mode, so it's even easier to see exactly how a Webcard listing will look and behave before it goes live.

Early reviews from users are positive; please let us know what you think.

- Hal Rucker

"Webcards Lite"

Many people have noticed a technical change we recently implemented: Webcard Listings discovered on the Web outside of a Smalltown local site now open in their own browser window. (Internally we called this project "Webcards Lite".)

We made this change for two reasons:

1. When users find a Webcard listing on Google, Yahoo! and the other popular search sites, we don't want them to have to go to a Smalltown local site just to view the Webcard and the information it contains.

2. We have a big announcement coming up in mid-May, and "Webcards Lite" was one of the first steps in building the infrastructure for the new launch.

Here are some examples of Webcard listings that show this new behavior:

The Spa Studio http://www.smalltown.com/sanmateo/thespastudio

Malouf's Fine Clothing http://www.smalltown.com/burlingame/maloufs

The Paw Spa http://www.smalltown.com/sanmateo/pawspa

Chez Saigon http://www.smalltown.com/belmont/chezsaigon

Sibby's Cupcakery http://www.smalltown.com/sanmateo/sibby

Rainbow Pizza http://www.smalltown.com/sanmateo/card/7106

JoAnne Quilala http://www.smalltown.com/millbrae/monavie

Doody Calls http://www.smalltown.com/sanmateo/doodycalls

- Hal Rucker

Is Downtown San Mateo the New Palo Alto?

Get a cup of coffee at 3 Bees, minestrone soup at Amici's or breakfast at Bay Watch and you're sure to see a group of people chatting who look suspiciously like software developers. You might also spot the occasional VC meeting with an entrepreneur at Kingfish or B Street and Vine. What will be the next Buck's - Sinbad Restaurant or Jeffrey's Hamburgers?

Here is a list of startups in downtown San Mateo I know about. Please add a comment if you know others.

AdMob

Bluepulse

Hooked On Golf

Jump Associates

Mbuzzy.com

Oodle

Rolling Orange, Inc.

Wikia, Inc.

Skydeck, Inc.

RockYou

Tapatap, Inc.

Speeddate.com

TikGames, LLC

GameStrata

Rexee

- Hal Rucker

Smalltown Awarded "Best Startup" Finalist

Smalltown was selected this week by SAMCEDA (San Mateo County Economic Development Association) as a finalist for "Best Startup Company in San Mateo County". I hope our staff will look up from their computers long enough to enjoy this recognition for the great work they've done in our community.

Now get back to work ;-)

- Hal Rucker

Robert Goldberg joins Smalltown BOD

I'm pleased to announce that Robert Goldberg has joined the Smalltown team.

Robert is the Managing Director of Crossroads Ventures. Prior to founding Crossroads, Robert was the Managing Director of Venture Operations at Idealab where he partnered with the operating teams and helped manage the Idealab portfolio of companies including Snap, Insider Pages, X1, New.net/Vendare Media, Desktop Factory, Evolution Robotics, and Energy Innovations.

Prior to joining Idealab, Goldberg spent more than 20 years in senior management, corporate investment and strategy positions at media, e-commerce and enterprise software companies, including NBCi, Looksmart, and Thinking Machines. He has developed and invested in successful companies across many industries including Web Search, Decision Support Systems, Enterprise Search, Performance Based and Cross Media Advertising. Robert holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Applied Science from Columbia University in New York City.

Sales and Promotions

We added some new functionality this week: our local events calendar now sorts event listings by type. We also simplified the user interface for choosing the start and end dates of an event. Icons were added to make it easy to visually scan for certain types of events, specifically:

- Community event

- Education or workshop

- Family fun

- Garage sale

- Grand opening

- Music and theater

- Nightlife

- Open house

- Sale or promotion

- Sporting event

The addition of "sale or promotion" is a great new feature for local merchants and Smalltown users because it's an easy, targeted and free way to let the community know about, well, upcoming sales and promotions. Sure beats a $600 ad in the local paper.

- Hal Rucker

A Long Response to Zippy

Greg Sterling has a popular blog about local media called Screenwerk and he recently posted a note about our San Carlos launch. A reader named Zippy made some valid observations and I posted a reply. I pasted it below.

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Let me try to shed some light on issues raised by Zippy.

Zippy: "Smalltown acquired a really useful, pre-web 2.0 phone tree-type service called local2me.com. All Rucker has done is jazz it up a bit graphically."

HR: Local2Me is an email-based service where neighbors can exchange comments about local topics. It's a great service. I've been using it myself since it first started because I worked at Excite with Michael Olivier who developed it. We haven't made any significant changes to the Local2Me email service. Instead, we are talking to some of the more active users as a kind of "real world focus group in action." With their input, we are designing some great new features in our Discussions area.

The Smalltown website has many features that are not available on Local2me. In particular, Smalltown has Webcard postings, which are like online multimedia brochures about local merchants and service providers. The basic concept behind the site is to enable local businesses, as well as community members to participate, thus creating a two-way conversation between businesses and the local people they serve.

For example, if you post a listing on Smalltown that asks “Can anybody recommend a contractor to fix my bathroom?” a neighbor can reply “Yes, we used Joe Smith and he is great. Here is his Smalltown Webcard”. Joe Smith’s Webcard is his web presence with all the up-to-the-minute information about Joe and his services, and it can be attached to a comment just like attaching a file to an email.

On Local2me, neighbors ask questions and provide answers. On Smalltown, neighbors ask questions, provide answers, and pass around Webcards as a way to share in depth and current local information.

Many online communities, including Local2Me, have user generated content. Smalltown's focus is the integration of user generated content AND merchant generated content into one user experience. This includes our ReplyBack feature that makes it easy for a merchant to respond to a review. It's actually pretty cool.

Zippy: The owner of local2me was more of a Craig Newmark (craig’s list) kind of guy, in that he was more interested in community than profits.

HR: You know, I hear this every once in a while from Local2Me users. But I can't resist pointing out that Local2Me has banner ads, interstitial email ads and Google Ads! (And, by the way, Craig Newmark is a multi-millionaire.) I guess I just want to add that we're not the bad guys because we want to pay our employees. In addition, using Smalltown is free. Smalltown doesn't have any traditional ads. And the service is supported by merchants in the community who want to connect with their neighbors.

Zippy: "But how is Smalltown going to make people come back regularly when it really doesn’t have much content, or most important, “soul”.

HR: Well, we already have over 22,000 Webcards in our 7 towns. (Take a look… I think we have a truly impressive amount of content for a 15-month-old site.)

Smalltown's homepage changes every day and we continue to add sticky content. We have a local events calendar that lists interesting things going on around town. Soon we will be adding a Sales and Promotions calendar so locals can check which stores are offering good deals.

There are two important business details to understand. First, we email a Daily Digest to our registered users that contains all the new content, including coupons, that has been posted on our website. (http://www.smalltown.com/sanmateo/html/dailydigest ) Many of our users don't visit the site regularly because the most interesting new content is delivered to them. Second, we do not have any traditional banner ads. So we care less than most websites do about traffic and ad impressions. We're a bit more like the yellow pages -  one doesn't read the yellow pages every day; one reads the yellow pages every once in a while when one needs to look up a merchant or service provider. Smalltown is somewhere between the two. We want enough traffic so there are useful reviews and discussions, but our key metric is "Do our paying customers get more value from us than they pay for their Webcard?"

Regarding "soul", wow, I agree we need more of it. We're working on it, but it's an elusive asset. It's one of the reasons we want to have access to learn from Local2Me. Our philosophy is to build a flexible platform and let each town create its own flavor and spice through the addition of local content. Do the yellow pages have a soul? I like to think we've at least surpassed that mark ;-)

Zippy: "My “sense” is that people are not using it very much–as I said, not enough for Smalltown to charge profitable rates for the moment."

HR: Our product, an "Enhanced Webcard" costs $40 per month with an annual contract. We have over 500 Enhanced Webcards on our sites. Some of those were done for free when we launched our first town. We did this to kick-start the website. But we no longer give away Webcards.

All we have to do is show our customers, the Enhanced Webcard owners, that they are getting more than $40 per month of business from their Smalltown listing. Our first annual contracts are coming up for renewal this spring, and we are prepared to show them the numbers to prove the ROI of a Webcard is the best local advertising dollar they ever spent.

Zippy: "It’s also based on the very positive advertiser testimonials posted on Smalltown’s website. They all say they love the format/webcards. Significantly, however, no one is saying what a great response they get in terms of paying customers."

HR: Please watch the video again. There are several customers who talk about ROI in real numbers: http://www.smalltown.com/theater_smalltown.html . I can also put you in touch with other happy customers. Really, I'm not being flippant. We know our customers, they work around the corner, and I'd be proud to have you talk to them about how well their Webcards are serving their local online advertising needs.

- Hal Rucker

Smalltown: Win an iPhone

A quick note to announce Smalltown is having a fun contest to encourage our members to update their personal profiles. We're giving away an Apple iPhone to the best new personal profile submitted.

All one needs to do is login at www.smalltown.com, upload a photo, type in some interesting text, and enter to win the iPhone.

Details can be found at http://www.smalltown.com/ipod_promo.html

Smalltown is not a social networking site. So why are we having a promotion to encourage registered users to update their profiles? There are two reasons.

First, when we originally storyboarded the registration process, our goal was to make it as zero mass as possible. It's quick and simple, and we don't prompt users to register until they try to complete a task that requires it. So many users don't even know they can customize their profiles. The contest helps make them aware that they can upload a photo and write something about themselves.

Second, we're looking into ways to make Smalltown a bit more fun. We're finding that Smalltown sites are becoming so rich with information that they're also becoming a bit dry. This contest is a simple first step into injecting some more local color to keep up with the deep local knowledge.

- Hal Rucker

 

Virgin Towns and Halo Towns

Smalltown, San Carlos went live today. This is our seventh Smalltown site; we continue to make our way down the Peninsula from Millbrae to Palo Alto as planned. The most interesting detail regarding San Carlos is that we built the new site and pre-loaded it with content in only two weeks. Our very first town, Burlingame, which is about the same size as San Carlos, took four times as many person-hours to prepare. We’re figuring out how to launch new towns in much less time for much less money.

Our ability to launch a new town efficiently will be very important when we start to expand to hundreds of towns. We’re speeding up the process in three ways.

1. We’re learning that “Halo Towns” are easier to launch than “Virgin Towns”. Burlingame was a virgin town because it was first. There weren’t any adjacent Smalltown Sites. On the other hand, San Carlos borders several towns that already have Smalltown sites. We believe it is very important for a user to have a great first experience doing a search at a Smalltown site, so we preload each site with content before going live. If a town like San Carlos is touching towns with existing Smalltown sites, the Webcards in the halo towns are included in the search results. (This feature can easily be turned off by the user.) The neighboring towns which have been around for a while make the virgin town look better. Bottom line: we now know that halo towns are much easier and can plan accordingly.

2. We’re happy if 85% of the content is updated and accurate. The last 15% is just too time consuming to track down and correct. We find this to be a reasonable compromise because our data is “self healing”. If we didn’t see a vacant building and remove it from our data, we’re probably okay because one of our users will click on “report this” and tell us about it. Unlike most directory information databases, the longer a Smalltown site is around, the more accurate its data becomes.

3. Our processes are getting better. We’ve had time to try out several variations of walking down streets with a camera and a clipboard, and the current process is much faster and more accurate. The next step is to build some custom technology that eliminates the need to carry both a camera and a clipboard. Perhaps a wireless device with a keyboard, a camera and a database – it’s easy to visualize.

Some relevant links:

The new San Carlos site: http://www.smalltown.com/sancarlos/

The new Daily Digest: http://www.smalltown.com/sancarlos/html/dailydigest

Press Release: http://www.smalltown.com/pressreleases.html

Visit the "City of Good Living" www.smalltown.com/sancarlos

- Hal Rucker

 

A Good Problem to Have

So many people in the Smalltown community are making Webcard postings and listing new content, the original design of the emailed Daily Digest has become obsolete. We're launching a new design today with its own simple navigation to make it easier to scan through everything that's new.

The left hand column has a list of all the sections of the Daily Digest. Click on a section name in the list, and you'll jump right to it. The Coupons section is a special case because, now that we have dozens of valuable special offers every day, the coupons are also organized by category.

Another improvement is we list local events that are happening today, and future events that are being announced for the first time. And as before, all the items in the Daily Digest link back to their respective Webcard on the Smalltown site.

Note at the top of the layout there is a photo and paragraph about a topic of local interest. That actually is a place keeper for our first new product since the Webcard posting, an area for a local advertiser to pay to sponsor the Daily Digest. The photo will be the main photo from their enhanced Webcard, and the text will be the description from their Welcome Tab. Naturally, we will label the content as a sponsored listing.

Here's an example of the new design: http://www.smalltown.com/sanmateo/html/dailydigest

The next feature coming soon is a local "Sales Calendar". This tool will enable local merchants to announce, describe and post sales and promotions on a dedicated calendar that appears on the Home Tab. The new content will be included in the Daily digest.

Please let us know what you think of the new design.

- Hal Rucker

 

No Carpetbaggers

We recently sponsored the Downtown San Mateo Business Association’s Halloween Festival for the second year in a row. It was a fun milestone for us.

- I recognized people from last year, and they remembered us. It takes time for a community to adopt a company as part of its local economy, and it feels like that’s already starting to happen for Smalltown. Our office is just a few blocks from where the event took place. We served It’s-Its Ice Cream, a local institution here on the Peninsula and a locally produced product. Many of the people at the Halloween Fun Fest remembered us from Little League opening day and other events we sponsored. In other words, we’re becoming familiar and trusted.

- In light of the recent histories of InsiderPages, Backfence and Judy’s Book, it’s gratifying to be thriving long enough to sponsor a major local event two years in a row. Our Series A has gotten us far, including the ability to hand out 500 It’s-It treats to kids in our neighborhood.

- I’ve always believed that you can’t do local advertising from afar. A salesperson in a call center in Florida who calls a restaurant in San Mateo will reach the hostess who takes dinner reservations; not the owner who buys ads. Our sales people walk or drive to the restaurant to try the food and talk to the manager. Furthermore, when we knock on their doors they see us as people in their community; not carpetbaggers rolling through town to sell them junk. It takes time and money to gain the trust of local business owners, but once you do you have a customer for life.

Smalltown Acquires Local2Me Service

EXCITING NEWS: Smalltown has acquired Local2me, a website and email service here in the Bay Area that enables people to post questions and receive answers from their neighbors. Smalltown has a similar functionality that goes a step further by allowing users to attach a Webcard posting to their answer, thus connecting a customer with a problem to a business with a solution.

So why did Smalltown purchase Local2Me?

1. Local2Me’s epicenter is Belmont, CA, so it’s a fortuitous way to instantly triple our user base in our existing towns.

2. When we convert Local2Me’s 30,000 discussions into our Webcard format, our users will benefit from deep local data acquired over the last 7 years. Now when one does a search for “Who is the best guitar teacher in town?” there will be tens of thousands of responses for us to search. In other words, merging Local2Me’s content into our platform instantly gives our users access to 7 years of deep local knowledge.

3. Local2Me already thrives on the “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” online culture that encourages users to contribute content; not just lurk and read it. The energy of this user base plus our enabling technology will quickly turn our existing sites into paradigms for how entertaining, useful and profitable a Smalltown site is when it’s fully embraced by a community.

Following are Smalltown’s press release and the letter Michael Olivier (Founder and CEO) sent to the Local2Me community.

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SMALLTOWN ACQUIRES LOCAL2ME FOR ITS ACTIVE USER BASE AND DEEP LOCAL CONTENT

Integration of Local2Me Online Community Accelerates Adoption of Smalltown along San Francisco Peninsula and Prepares Company for National Rollout

SAN MATEO, Calif. – October 15, 2007 – Smalltown® (www.smalltown.com), the company building the “Local Web” comprised of user and merchant generated content sites that connect businesses and their neighbors, today announced the purchase of Local2Me, a seven-year-old online community.

Both Smalltown and Local2Me have developed platforms that enable people to ask questions and receive answers from their own neighbors, creating a repository of deep, trusted local knowledge. The Local2Me service has thousands of dedicated users and over 30,000 discussions about local topics. This acquisition accelerates Smalltown’s deep dive into the San Francisco Peninsula market, shortening the timeline for their national rollout.

“Local2Me is a vibrant virtual community where people in the Bay Area have been discussing everything in their real communities since 2000,” said Hal Rucker, CEO and co-founder of Smalltown. “The depth of the information is astounding. You can find a highly recommended orthopedic surgeon to do a shoulder replacement surgery, or discover the best block in town to take kids trick-or-treating. By merging Local2Me’s deep user generated content with our technology that integrates local discussions with rich merchant generated content, we will have an exciting paradigm for future Smalltown deployments.”

Smalltown’s Patent-Pending Webcard™ Postings – A New Type of Web Presence for Small Businesses and Their Neighbors

Smalltown is empowering neighborhood communities with an integrated online user generated content tool called a “Webcard posting.” Similar to social networking and blogging sites that create online communities with simple features for posting and sharing content, the Webcard posting is a specialized tool that meets the unique needs of small businesses and their geographically defined community. Webcard postings are engineered to be indexed by the popular search engines, including Yahoo! and Google. Currently, Webcard postings can include rich text, hyperlinks, photo galleries, videos, coupons and anonymous contact forms. Soon they will include opt-in newsletters, appointment calendars and other advanced features.

“When I decided to find a new home for the Local2Me service, I looked for a company with a spirit that matched ours, and the technology that would not only help the Local2Me community thrive, but would connect them to neighborhood businesses as well,” said Michael Olivier, CEO and Founder of Local2Me. “Smalltown’s unique user experience makes it incredibly easy for anyone to research and contribute to their town’s local knowledgebase, and that includes businesses. They’ve combined user generated content with rich merchant generated content in a novel and very useful way. Now, when a neighbor recommends a car mechanic, they can easily include all the valuable information found in the car mechanic’s Webcard posting.”

“Smalltown’s pilot towns on the San Francisco Peninsula are living proof that, to be adopted as a complete local reference tool by both neighbors and merchants in a given community, you need to take a deep and narrow approach to community building,” said Clint Chao, Smalltown’s investor and general partner at Formative Ventures. “The integration of Local2Me’s active discussion database into Smalltown’s local sites is another step to demonstrate the incredible value of a Smalltown website after it has been embraced by a community.”

About Smalltown

Smalltown currently hosts community sites in five towns, containing over 19,000 Webcard postings. Privately held and headquartered in San Mateo, California, Smalltown was founded in 2005. The company is building an infrastructure for today’s Local Web, which will support a network of hyper-local Smalltown community sites equipped to empower local economies and promote the vitality, individuality and immediacy of each community – one “Smalltown” at a time. Smalltown is funded by Formative Ventures. For more information visit http://www.smalltown.com or watch the video at http://www.smalltown.com/theater_smalltown.html.

Download smalltown_local2me_release_final.doc

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Michael Olivier's Letter to the Local2Me Community

Dear Local2Me Friends & Neighbors,

I am very pleased to announce that the Local2Me email and web service has been acquired by Smalltown, Inc. (www.smalltown.com).

Earlier this year I decided it was time for Local2Me’s next step, which was diverging from my career path at Yahoo!. Local2Me is a thriving online community that’s an important tool in my daily life, as I know it has been in many of yours. I am very happy that it will have a continued lifeline in the hands of Smalltown, which through my research I found to be the best match to the spirit of L2M. Check out their video at www.smalltown.com/theater_smalltown.html

I have been extremely impressed with Smalltown CEO Hal Rucker, who I’ve known since we worked together at Excite.com. He’s an exceptional person, with an unusually straightforward, honest style and high level of integrity. I know Local2Me will be in good hands with him, and I am excited about Smalltown’s direction and potential. They are using new technology to make it easy for you to share more and different kinds of information than can be conveyed just in email.

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! It’s a rich, ever-growing collection of unique local knowledge that will continue to thrive at Smalltown. For now, you won’t notice any difference in the L2M service because it will be a while before Smalltown integrates L2M into their platform. Also, Hal admits up front that the Smalltown Discussions section needs to be improved before integrating the L2M community, and his team will be soliciting ideas and feedback from L2M users as part of the redesign process.

Many have helped me with the service over the years, but I want to especially call out two people. Big thanks to Danny van der Rijn, who has helped me with site moderation since 2003. And the biggest thanks to my wife, Kasey, who has been my helper, advisor, and supporter from the beginning!

Thank you all for your participation on and support of Local2Me. It has been a lot of fun and I look forward to its next steps with Smalltown.

Cheers,

Michael Olivier

Smalltown Video: Hear it from Our Customers

I hear from Smalltown.com users every day, telling me how well their Webcards are meeting their need to drive customers and connect with their community. When I tell people about the good feedback, most are justifiably too cynical to take me seriously. I am, after all, extremely biased. Fortunately, we just completed a video showcasing real testimonials from real Smalltown users and customers.

Click here to watch the video >>

- Hal Rucker

Cupcake Worthy

We received comments from 15 people who tried to describe Smalltown. Honestly, I don’t think any one paragraph encapsulated everything Smalltown is about, which actually makes me feel better about my own inability to say it all in a sentence or two. But I chose this one posted by TerriM to be most cupcake worthy:

Smalltown is like having all my neighbors within earshot when I want to scream, "Where can I find a good BLANK." You can fill in the blank - barber for my husband, something fun to do with the kids... a great place to buy shoes.

TerriM, please send me your contact information and I’ll have the Sibby’s Cupcakes sent your way.

- Hal Rucker