Palo Alto-based local news startup Topix.net announced today that it has taken $15 million in additional funding from newspaper groups McClatchy, Tribune, and Gannett, who have also been their initial investors. This announcement comes after their relaunch back in August.
Topix.net has been one of the oldest players in the local news space, their launch dating back to 2002. While they’ve tapped into a broad market with a niche focus and a lot of potential, something they haven’t managed to gain is exposure.
A majority of their traffic is accounted from search engines (after all, they have nearly a million pages in Google’s index). Since interest in news and more specifically local news is a very mainstream topic, they’re a good example of a company which accommodates this market while staying true to providing early adopter tools such as RSS and codes for websites to syndicate their content.
Topix.net’s competitors range from big shows Google News and Yahoo! News to one year-old Newsvine, which seems to be doing something similar. In the end, I think for Topix.net to grow their presence they’re going to have to step aside from new features and upgrades and start focusing on things which really defines them to consumers.
[tags]Topix.net, Local, Search, News, RSS[/tags]
