CitySearch, a company owned by IAC (also the parent company of search engine AskJeeves), confirmed the rumors today that it has acquired small Valley-based local search startup Insider Pages for an estimated sum of $13 million.
I have to admit, as much as I don’t see the point of much of what’s going on in the local search space, I have a feeling it could go big. Insider Pages, which was made completely with Ruby on Rails (there’s some inspiration guys!), is basically a local business search and reviews site in the same space as Yelp (which is undoubtedly leading the market right now, could it go next?), Smallville, LinkedIn and others.
I think strategically it makes perfect sense for CitySearch to purchase Insider Pages — while Insider Pages has a lot of the user-generated content, CitySearch has a lot of good data, put them together and you’ll have something good. Insider Pages has Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab (Overture) as Chairman and has received $9 million in venture capital from Sequoia.
Local is a tough business. My first job in the internet industry was at CitySearch, where we were selling websites door to door in 1996 to pizzarias, auto body shops and nail salons. I posted some commentary on the difficulties in the online cityguide business at the Lightspeed blog - if you’re interested click through on my name in this post