Veteran Web innovators Steven Berlin Johnson and John Geraci today launched ad-supported local info site Outside.in, which culls local news and events, and allows users to search it by ZIP code.
Johnson was co-creator of Feed Magazine, one of the earliest Web efforts, and community site Plastic.com, while Geraci has worked on social media sites like Neighbornode.net, Pheeder.com and
Foundcity.com.
Outside.in--which covers 63 cities and 3,217 neighborhoods--culls the feeds of local-focused Web logs for stories about businesses, activities and news, and attaches
them to the appropriate ZIP code. Users can then search their own ZIP codes for stories about a particular topic.
Launching after a four-month beta test, the site covers mostly local blogs, but
encourages users to submit links to stories from newspapers covering their neighborhoods. Johnson said the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based company is also in talks with national media companies to share their
content in exchange for access to locally focused news stories.
The site currently hosts Google AdSense spots, but Johnson said the company will soon be looking to recruit local advertisers.
"For the local advertisers who just want to be targeting the people who are in their immediate community, we also are completely optimized for that," he said. "We might do a little test run in
Brooklyn and hire someone to sell Brooklyn and see what the model looks like, but we haven't gotten that far."
The company is also in talks with national advertisers, Johnson said, who can reach
specific demographics by targeting the ZIP codes in which they live.
"Behind the scenes, it's all organized around ZIP codes, so there's an opportunity for national advertisers," he said. "If
they're going after hipsters, they want to get the Silverlake and Williamsburg ZIP codes."
The company also closed a small venture funding round, taking $900,000 in financing from Union Square
Ventures, Milestone Ventures and Village Ventures, as well as three angel investors.