Yahoo is just beginning to roll out its new local product — which was hinted at earlier this year — starting with beta pages for San Francisco, Brooklyn and Michigan. You can select a city, or drill down to a neighborhood, like the Mission District in San Francisco. Each page is a rolling list of aggregation, contributor posts via Associated Content, events and nearby deals from more than a dozen providers like Groupon and Living Social.
Many of the headlines, especially at the neighborhood level, originate from neighborhood blogs. You can post an event, or sign up with Associated Content to become a paid contributor. “We have launched Yahoo! local in a few neighborhoods and towns to refine the experience while gathering more content for the next set of cities,” explains the site.
While this is still in beta, at first blush, it seems to be a rather minor effort compared to AOL’s steep investment in Patch. It’ll also be interesting to see how — if at all — Yahoo plans to blend its new local product with its Neighbors forum.
