AOL is going great guns with local news. We already know about Patch, AOL’s quickly-growing network of local news sites that aims to expand into the hundreds. And now AOL says it’s creating a hyperlocal venture capital fund for budding entrepreneurs in the space, as well as relaunching its “City’s Best” franchise to 25 cities. And AOL said it plans to ramp up local content on the AOL.com home page.
First, the venture fund. AOL says it will “target” promising local ventures that are “fundamentally improving the local experience for consumers, businesses, governments and organizations.” The fund stands at $10 million, and AOL says it has yet to make an investment.
“Local is the one area of the Internet that has not been built out in an extensive way. While there are companies in the local space, AOL has the technology to digitize the local space at scale,” said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. “We believe it’s an untapped market for the most part and one of the largest commercial opportunities online that has yet to be won.”
City’s Best is a best-of business directory product that focuses on local entertainment options. AOL said the plan is to launch 25 major metro markets in the third quarter of 2010.
And perhaps most interesting, is AOL.com’s plan to shift its content mix in the local direction, similar to what MSN.com has recently done. AOL says it will use its Relegence technology, “which monitors, indexes and filters thousands of news sources,” to serve up content tailored to a user’s zip code. Of course, this will likely promote AOL’s content ventures, from Patch to City’s Best.
