• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 21, 2008

Continuing efforts to singlehandedly redefine notions of local content and ad targeting online, Brooklyn-based startup Outside.in has raised additional capital and appointed a new CEO, Mark Josephson.

The local news and blog site has raised $3 million in a series A financing from top-tier investors, including Union Square Ventures, Milestone Venture Partners, and the New York City Investment Fund.

Josephson, the former president of ad network Seevast and former general manager of About.com, said what attracted him to Outside.in was the chance to completely redefine "local media."

"Outside.in has a year and a half head start on taking local services beyond the ZIP code, building the data set needed to do that, and core technology that can look at a page and identify its relevance," Josephson said.

A platform for neighborhood news and conversation, Outside.in has created a national database of location-specific blogs and Web sites. Its technology dynamically maps Web content to offline locations, which allows for hyper-local news discovery and sharing for consumers, and provides tools for content creators of all sizes.

Co-founder and former CEO Steven Berlin Johnson will remain actively involved as executive chairman.

"We've spent the past 18 months building the largest database of place-based content on the Web, and we've developed pioneering tools for exploring all that information," said Johnson.

The Outside.in brand is still green, and there is a distinct chance that the company's new front door will be a feed service named Radar, which is presently in private alpha mode and only covers New York City.

Going forward, one of Josephson's many challenges will be establishing relationships with content providers of all shapes and sizes, along with the portals and platforms where consumers choose to consume information online.

"We see the Facebooks and the Googles of the world all as potential partners," Josephson said.

Angel investors like Marc Andreessen, Esther Dyson, and John Seely Brown previously helped Outside.in raise over $2 million.