Zvents, the events lister, is reporting 35 percent year over year growth with over eight million unique visitors, largely due to its powering events for 285 local media brands, including  major newspapers and the NBC owned-and-operated TV stations.

CEO Ethan Stock cites Quantcast data showing Zvents Media Network as the 250^th most used net on the Web, ahead of Citysearch (#267) and Local.com (#291). “We’re a very large local property by any measure,” he says.

The company, which has raised $32 million over its five year history, also claims it has been averaging 12,000 monthly event listers. These use the site to promote a wide range of local events and activities, including live music, performing arts, sporting events and community activities.

Of those listers, roughly 1200, or 10 percent, are now boosting their presence by taking out ads via self–serve – a percentage that Stock thinks will climb to 20 percent in 2010. The company also sells regional and national accounts via telemarketing and national sales, with top categories including major concert promoters, sports teams, casinos and  home and garden events.

High end shopping, with its sales-oriented events, such as Williams Sonoma cooking demonstrations, are also becoming more important to Zvents bottom line.  “There is a significant segment of consumers who perceive shopping as entertainment,” says Stock.

The key to the company’s future in local, however, is to stay away from the trap of focusing on directory-type advertising. Instead, Zvents will stay focused on events and shopping, he says, which have the most highly motivated advertisers. “They are also relatively concentrated in terms of the volume of advertising.”

Indeed, the company’s focus on events and advertising puts it most in competition with social sites such as Facebook and Google, rather than local sites such as Citysearch and Yelp, who may be more directory oriented, says Stock. Other events oriented companies include Eventful, and “new city guide” players such as Center’d and American Towns.

In hindsight, the company’s initial focus on teaming with newspapers “look like a very smart choice,” adds Stock. While newspapers are commonly disparaged in today’s climate for their declining circulation and advertising, “they have high repeat traffic. Much more than national partners.” Top Zvents newspaper partners include SFGate, the Denver Post, Seattle PI, Boston.com, the Dallas Morning News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, New York Daily News, and the Orange County Register.

Stock also sees a major boost coming from renewed efforts in local from national partners such as AT&T’s Yellowpages.com, which has been an investor in the company ; and from MSN, where Zvents listings will be showing up in Bing, and trigger Instant Answers via Silverlight search.

Yelp has been on a roll, and is now reporting that it gets 29 million unique visitors a month. Given that, the company’s immediate challenge is to move beyond its core base of restaurant and shopping reviews and dive deep for Yellow Pages-arena services reviews, as well as reviews for classified categories, such as autos and real estate/apartments.

Restaurants currently make up 29 percent of reviews, while shopping constitutes 23 percent. Other major categories include beauty and fitness (9 percent), arts & entertainment (8 percent), home and local services (7 percent), entertainment (5 percent), and nightlife (4 percent).

Apartments are certainly a good place for Yelp to concentrate on, especially given the youthful target sought by apartment managers. Almost half of Yelp’s users (46 percent) are between 18 and 34 years old, while 36 percent are between 35 and 49.

So it was no surprise that Yelp COO Geoff Donaker was out evangelizing the cause this morning on a webinar conducted by NCI’s Apartment Finder, a leading publication for managers of mega-apartment complexes.

The evangelism effort’s a good idea. In a survey before the call, just 35 percent of the webinar audience said they were already familiar with Yelp, and just 5 percent said they were already engaged with Yelp as a business owner. Sixty-one percent, however, said they had never heard of it.

Donaker told the webinar attendees that while he hoped they eventually advertised on Yelp, he was mostly interested in getting them tuned into Yelp as a marketing resource and to get them to access their business owner accounts and improve their pages. He noted that most reviews on Yelp were actually positive ones and they shouldn’t be afraid of the community feedback.

Many apartment managers, however, have cold feet vis-a-vis reviews due to what Apartment Finder VP of Operations Judy Bellack suggested was “extremely negative” experience with one site in particular: Internet Brands’ ApartmentRatings.com.

One of the success factors for apps joining the crowded fray (140,000 iPhone apps) is elegant melding with the hardware and general mobile “use case.” This is contrasted with Web-based products that shove themselves onto a smaller screen. Bar code scanning apps and voice search are a few examples we’ve explored here recently.

Siri launched today in the latter category with an iPhone app that has a voice controlled interface to find and discover items and events around you. After $24 million in funding and years of Darpa-supported underlying research at SRI, it carries a robust natural language processor.

Results from spoken queries are returned from 30 different services (via API) and more to come. These include OpenTable, TaxiMagic, MovieTickets.com, WeatherBug, Yahoo Local, Eventful, Citysearch, and AllMenus. In this way, it is making a clear run at ultimate mobile aggregator status.

True to the mobile device, it doesn’t require a lot of finger pecking, but rather discovers the right source based on semantic analysis. This requires speech-to-text capability as well as a cognitive engine to discern and return appropriate results. Like many such systems, it will get better over time via feedback loop and machine learning.

It’s available for free in the App Store, though it’s recommended for use on the iPhone 3Gs, due to required processing speeds (more compatibility to come later). Siri will make money through affiliate revenues with its content partners — usually tied to local actions taken, such as table reservations through OpenTable.

It looks to have all the ingredients to quickly surface in the App Store’s most-popular lists. You can also picture it easily making its way to “there’s an app for that” TV spots. We should see more voice search interfaces develop and more intelligent discovery engines — both important trends in mobile. This is the first to combine them in what appears to be an elegant fashion.

It will require more review, a conversation with the company, and of course the market’s reaction. More to come on all fronts. In the meantime, below is a video that highlights its features, including natural language processing. “Take me drunk, I’m home” is my favorite (but hopefully not needed anytime soon).

If you’re like me, your computer is weighed down with way too many files, e-mails and spyware. And if you’re really like me, you don’t have any time to do a system purge.

Short of throwing a party whose theme is just a ruse to have friends do it for you, there’s a national day to band together in commiseration around much needed system cleansing. Yes, this really exists; Feb. 8 (this Monday).

It was started in 2000 by Institute for Business Technology, with the idea that slow machines aren’t just aggravating, but can dig into productivity and thus profitability. A fair amount of system maintenance vendors like iolo are backing the day for obvious reasons.

Here are a few stats they provided:

• The average American adult has 1,800 digital files, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, making searching them quite a task.
• Executives waste six weeks each year looking for lost items and information, according to a study published in the Wall Street Journal, adding up for huge corporate operating losses.
• Americans waste nine million hours per day searching for misplaced items. On average, people spend a year of our lives looking for lost items, according to the National Association of Professional Organizers. Imagine the things you could do if cleaning up your computer saved some of those hours!
• In 2007 alone more than 40 million computers were dumped, up from 20 million in 1998. On average, each computer lasted only 30 months, that short life span often attributed to the need for larger hard drive. Save yourself the money and the environment the damage by freeing up space on your old hard drive.

You can find out more and get in on the action (including list of tips) here and here.

Gannett has always seemed to be a likely directory player. In fact, the world’s largest newspaper publisher owns a small group of print directories. It also provides a white-labeled online directory product to its media properties.

But as directories, search and user-generated content have become more commingled, Gannett has gone a step further with the launch of FindItNow.com, a new directory product from its Planet Discover division.

FindItNow.com is national, but has been localized for specific markets.  It is currently live in three markets: Rochester, Nashville and Burlington, Vermont. Only local information and content is featured. Key categories include Auto, Dining & Entertainment, Health & Medicine, Pets & Animals and Shopping.

The site is integrated with Facebook Connect, and users can add reviews, photos and business details if they register. In Rochester, 883 people have registered to contribute information; in Nashville, 828 people have registered; and in Burlington, 218 people have registered.

The site, in fact, is a lot like other search-driven directories, such as MerchantCircle, ShopCity, SMBLive’s Cloud Profile and others. As with other sites, local businesses have the option of free or paid tiers. The paid tiers are set at $49 or $99 per month. Depending on which tier they choose, businesses can have preferred search result placement, company logo and dominant photo, extended business description, additional photos and unlimited coupons.

Marketplaces 2010 takes place just seven weeks from now in San Diego (March 22-24). We are putting the finishing touches on the program, and have added MANY exciting new speakers in just the past few weeks.

The event is totally dedicated to the higher value/conversion/engagement ethos of vertical media. For sure, this isn’t one size fits all of newspapers and Yellow Pages anymore (but then again, these traditional media are rapidly verticalizing too).

Featured sessions include five big keynotes; Mike Boland’s Mobile Vertical SuperForum; and a preconference session on the Tools of Marketplaces, including experts on search, video, enhanced calls, online scheduling, promotion and classifieds.

We also have cutting-edge panels on new directories and city guides; small-business marketplaces; vertical ad networks; vertical search; content aggregators (a great session with Examiner.com CEO Rick Blair); and local retailers and marketplaces. To top it all off, there is a special “making money” session with Classifieds Master Tony Lee, chief alliance officer of Adicio.

Basically, everyone is on board. Our five big keynotes will come from:

• Jon Brod, Executive VP, AOL Ventures
• Jay Herratti, CEO, Citysearch
• Andrew Mason, Founder and CEO, Groupon
• Sam Sebastian, Director, Local & B2B Markets, Google
• Craig Smith, CEO, ServiceMagic

Mike Boland’s Mobile Vertical SuperForum has eight great speakers:

• Sam Altman, Cofounder and CEO, Loopt
• Alec Andronikov, CEO, MoVoxx
• Craig Hagopian, President, V-Enable
• Scott Jampol, Senior Director of Consumer Marketing, OpenTable
• Steve Larsen, CEO, CallSpark
• Alexander Muse, Cofounder, Big in Japan (ShopSavvy)
• Eric Singley, Mobile Product Manager, Yelp
• David Sturtz, Cofounder and CEO, RepairPal

Other featured speakers include:

• Ethan Anderson, Cofounder, Redbeacon
• Jeff Beard, President and GM, Localeze
• Rick Blair, CEO, Examiner.com
• Reed Brown, President and CEO, Matchbin
• Jim Delli Santi, Cofounder and CEO, AlikeList
• Craig Donato, CEO, Oodle
• Todd Dubner, Senior VP, Development, NCI
• Jennifer Dulski, CEO, Center’d
• Sean Fox, COO, Reply.com
• Jordan Glazier, CEO, Eventful
• Krista Glotzbach, VP, Marketing, Vast.com
• Martin Herbst, GM, Kijiji U.S., eBay
• Greg Isaacs, Executive Director and GM, AT&T Interactive
• Jaan Janes, CEO, Pulse 360
• Joelle Kaufman, Senior VP, Marketing, Adify
• Warren Kay, VP, Fox Audience Network
• David Kidder, Cofounder and CEO, Clickable
• Tony Lee, Chief Alliance Officer, Adicio
• Colin Pape, CEO, ShopCity.com
• Ben Saren, Cofounder and CEO, CitySquares
• Julie Smith, Group Product Manager, SuperMedia
• Mat Stover, CEO, Local Matters
• David Vazdauskas, President, Local Thunder

Do you think it will be a great conference? Do you think you can do major business? Please get more info here or sign up to register here. Rates are better in advance than at the door.

Monster Worldwide has bought HotJobs from Yahoo for $225 million. It will also be in charge of Yahoo’s recruitment content in North America for the next three years, bringing in perhaps another $100 million for the life of the deal from home page traffic, etc. As part of the deal, which closes in 3Q 2010, Monster also gets exclusive rights to negotiate similar arrangements with Yahoo’s overseas properties.

HotJobs has been on the market since Carol Bartz took over as CEO of Yahoo early last year (or even before). It hasn’t been clear if anyone would buy it for more than a fire-sale price. The deal’s price of $225 million does represent a significant discount from the $439 million that Yahoo paid in 2002, but it is more than some handicappers had been predicting.

The deal likely propels Monster well past Gannett’s CareerBuilder as the online recruitment leaders (by revenues). Lately, CareerBuilder’s lagging profits have become a drain on Gannett’s profits. Likewise, Monster today reported that 4Q revs were down 27 percent, and that it suffered a net loss of $2.1 million on 4Q revenues of $213 million.

For Yahoo, the deal is the latest in a series of selloffs. Notably, it sold its search business to Microsoft last year, has de-emphasized other areas such as shopping and small business, and has been rumored to put some of its other verticals in play as well.

HotJobs, of course, had been the original glue that brought Yahoo and the newspapers together. But the consortium has lately been focused more on using Yahoo’s APT behavioral targeting advertising platform. Some members of the consortium already use Monster.

Recruitment remains a huge category, but in recent years, has been challenged by the recession. It has also become a major battle zone driven by technologies, such as semantic search-and-match job listings, mapping and communities of interest. Indeed, a growing part of the market has moved to niche specialties, such as trade associations, etc. At the same time, ancillary verticals such as vocational education, relocation and job fairs have proved to be less important than once thought.

Back in September, we speculated some of the reasons why streaming audio service Pandora could be a natural fit for local advertising. Now the story unfolds, as ClickZ reports it has shown interest in doing just that.

It is essentially spinning out an SMB-focused ad sales unit. This came from the need to free up national ad sales staff who were getting bogged down by incoming requests from local advertisers. On the other end, it has partnered with AdReady to have a ready-made display ad creation tool to offer to local advertisers.

AdReady could be a good choice in its simplicity (an imperative for small-business ad sales) and its success with display ad units. Display is the primary format seen on Pandora’s mobile and online consumer dashboards. AdReady has also worked with other local ad sales forces such as The New York Times and Univision.

The geolocation that Pandora brings to the table could meanwhile add more value to how these ads are targeted and measured. ClickZ quotes Pandora’s VP of performance ad sales, Brian Mikalis (formerly of AdReady):

“One of the differentiators for Pandora from other traditional sites is every single one of our users registers and gives us their zip code, so we can do that local marketing down to the DMA level very easily,” he said. “If you’re advertising on local markets on radio, you can do the same thing on Pandora.”

ZIP code level targeting isn’t such a rarity (especially in mobile), but his point is taken if the comparison is online banners or radio advertising. Pandora will also likely find that it will need a larger channel partner to augment/scale the effort. This is based simply on how advertiser acquisition costs stack up against average SMB spending budgets. Meaningful revenues only result from scale.

Yes, they’re getting incoming interest, which has motivated this expansion. But that could be an anomaly, not representative of the larger universe of SMB demand. Local ad sales is more push than pull — that much has been consistently proved over the past many decades. Size and strategy of the new ad sales team should play a factor.

But overall, we like what they’re doing here and their SMB targets are fitting to the product. AdReady CEO Aaron Finn tells my colleague Peter Krasilovsky that likely advertisers are music festivals, bands and colleges. Access to Pandora’s audience should resonate with this lot.

“The formation of a new inside sales organization is six months old but could represent a new direction for Pandora,” says Finn. “Working with AdReady will give them the ability to accept smaller advertisers in a more cost-effective way.”

Mobile visual search is something I like to consider an emerging field within an emerging field. It involves using the mobile device’s camera as a search or sensory input (rather than typing). The thought is that it’s fitting to the form factor and opens new directions for mobile content and advertising.

This comes in lots of flavors including product bar code scanners, Google Goggles, and the longer-term prospect of augmented reality. These are all interesting but the nearer term opportunity is in bar code scanners, given commercial applications and fewer “moving parts” (relatively).

This area is further subdivided into scanning technology for UPC product codes and QR codes. The former is more pervasive in the U.S. market due to its standardization in retail. The latter is more popular in a overseas markets such as Japan, but is beginning to get off the ground here.

Scanbuy is a company working with both formats, and just announced funding from Motorola Ventures. Its claim to fame is device compatibility, including Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Symbian. For Motorola, it’s a strategic investment for both financial returns and supply chain efficiencies through direct integration with its devices.

This comes soon after Microsoft’s announcement of a proprietary bar code technology known as Tag. In addition to scanning for product information, the goal is to plant these anywhere that additional information is desired (storefronts, billboards, Yellow Pages ads, etc.). Ties to promotions, coupons and other “directional” media are clear.

Both companies are going for standardization and better device compatibility — the biggest barrier to scale. Microsoft claims to not be as interested in direct monetization as in pushing an easy standard that will facilitate the growth of the medium overall. Direct monetization is something it will worry about later it claims. (Of course it will.)

More details to come, after we’re able to talk to both companies. Meanwhile, below is a video of Microsoft Tag in action.

In the quest to produce good leads, no stone goes unturned. In coming years, one of the best sources of leads may be online scheduling (or “appointment calendars”). Former YPG executive JP Lion is working on scheduling solutions with Maxipage. Bookfresh has concentrated on scheduling as its differentiator. Now along comes Full Slate.

CEO Bill Lange says that his two-year-old online scheduling company may look like a simple utility, but it plays a much larger role. “We’re a revenue generation and business growth tool for the SMBs, resellers and partners we work with,” he says.  “Consumers want to complete the deal online, and this gets you closer to the revenue.

“In the short term, it is a huge differentiator,” adds Lange. “In a couple of years, it will be a ‘must have’ feature.”

Top categories for Full Slate have been alternative health care, message therapists, fitness centers, hair and beauty salons, pet groomers, and mental health therapists and counselors. “These people live and die by their schedules,” says Lange.

Full Slate is pursuing its customers via a number of channels, including companies that create and promote online presence, general Web site builders, vertical Web site builders, vertical directory/trade associations, city guides, Internet Yellow Pages and SMB resellers. The site has also been surprised by the high degree of organic growth it has achieved, in part by being listed by SMB sites such as GoDaddy and Web.com.

One thing it won’t try to be is a destination site.  “We are not doing that,” says Lange. “We provide the conversion element.”

The company’s business model relies on offering free trials of 10 appointments, and then converting to monthly subscription fees that typically range from $29.95 to $49.95. Pricing is generally based on the number of employee schedules are maintained.

One of the company’s newest customers is Goodtherapy.org, the No. 2 therapist site (after Psychology Today) with 3,000 mental health therapists. It sees its business doubling or tripling in 2010 and eventually working its way up toward the 600,000 practicing therapists in the U.S.

CEO Noah Rubinstein tells us that the addition of online scheduling “is something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Therapy is a unique service in which relationships are very important.”

Rubinstein sees the feature giving a boost to his conversion numbers, and adding value in terms of retention. “It will help lock-in members for the long term,” he says. He especially appreciates that members can access their schedule via Full Slate, GoodTherapy.org or their own site.

Full Slate CEO Bill Lange is speaking on the Tools of Marketplaces precon at Marketplaces 2010 March 22-24 in San Diego.