SILICON BEAT — Oct 9 — Smalltown aims offers comprehensive local business listings and gives each local community its own look, more so than other local social network/listing sites, such as Yelp, InsiderPages, Judy's Book or BackFence. Smalltown has started out by focusing on one small town in Silicon Valley: San Mateo. It will build out from there. When you search for guitars, you see the listings in a tab, but you also see the reviews in a separate tab. Smalltown received $3 million in venture capital from Formative Ventures.
Mark Brooks: Companies are emerging to improve on Yellow Pages local search and layer in user reviews and the 'friendly referral.' This could also play into the 'classifieds' and online personals space. The search for compatible singles is inherently 'local.' Once these sites reach critical mass you can be sure they'll offer some kind of personals option.