AmericanTowns - More SN in the local space
By Vivek | September 14th, 2007 at 03:54 pm ET
Suddenly, the local social networking space looks as crowded as any other out there. The growing list now includes AmericanTowns, which has raised $3.3 million in funding from Idearc Media Corp. Existing offerings in this space include StreetAdvisor(review), TownConnect(review), CondoPerks(review), Trulia, Zillow and few more.
AmericanTowns is taking the Craigslist approach of socialnetworking by organizing the site around towns. AT want to help people find what is happening in their local government, schools, libraries and community groups and also search for recreation, entertainment, fun places to take the kids, restaurants, movies, realtors, businesses and other professional services. AT also has a pitch thrown in for local businesses and non-profits. Pretty much who-s-who features of local search and content aggregation space. Currently AT has some traffic coming along the way depending on which stats you look at.
on September 14th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I’m not sure that AmericanTowns is really a sn though, where are the people? I don’t see any way to connect with other people, it just lists events and organizations. The local info/network niche is an interesting one to me. For smaller cities, none of these really have much traction yet. I like the StreetAdvisor the best so far though.
Some post nitpicking, the StreetAdvisor link goes to the TownConnect review, and I think it would be helpful to have a link to AmericanTowns in the post.
on September 15th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Ryan, I think we need a new name for SN without the friend making component
Also all links are now corrected. Yesterday had been one hell of a day on my end. Hence ended up with typos.
on August 11th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
The word you’re looking for is “website.” Without people connecting and networking, it can’t be a network, nor can it be very social, so not even “social media” can work.