Placeblogging - Outside.In

Outside.in is a potentially valuable tool for bloggers who want to become known as experts in various areas in and around their local communities. It’s an early incarnation of the emerging trend in "placeblogging," which is just another term for the concept of hyperlocal content creation. This is especially key to the real estate profession.  As real estate blogging continues to explode, more and more professionals are trying to determine the best way to attract an audience (and, as an end result, leads) with local content — Outside.in could help speed up the process of building a local blog audience.

Drawing readers in by focusing on local content and news has worked for numerous smaller blogs, such as Backfence, Brownstoner, Boise’s Best Real Estate Blog, and Capitol Hill Seattle (many more listed here). The difficult part for many is the issue of discoverability; there is currently no central place that consumers can go to and instantly find neighborhood content of interest to them. Outside.in is hoping to change this, by aggregating local content and driving traffic back to the original post — essentially the same model Digg, Google, and Technorati use. The company helps users "discover the conversations that are going on in your neighborhood." Neighborhood content and conversations are relevant to real estate — after all, it’s all about location, location, location. Fred Wilson, a VC blogger in New York City, referred to the site as "what you’d get if you combined Google maps, Technorati, and del.icio.us and focused that service on placeblogs" in a  post focused on the topic of placeblogging (aka hyperlocal).

Outside.in received funding Tuesday from several angel investors and VC firms Union Square Ventures, Milestone Venture Partners, and Village Ventures (Press Release). All those readers who also read technology blogs probably saw the post on TechCrunch. Additionally, Fred Wilson posted a very thorough analysis as to what was appealing about the Outside.in from an investment standpoint.