Events are a vertical that cuts across many segments: travel, retail, sports, entertainment, education, dining, culture and others. Major players include specialists such as Zvents, Eventful, Americantowns.com and Center’d. City sites such as Citysearch and Yelp are active in the space as well.

A new one for us is Goby.com, a venture-backed firm that comes out of Mike Stonebraker’s relational database studies at MIT. The site, which launched in September 2009, has already had 250,000 visitors. It reviews 300 categories of things to do, from camping to opera. It can be embedded into other sites via Facebook Connect. An iPhone app is coming out “soon.”

The site breaks things up three ways: What would you like to do? Where? and When? It makes a special effort to go beyond “cities with airports next to them.” For instance, the most thorough listing of events in Carlsbad, CA 92009 that I’ve seen.

CEO Mark Watkins, a veteran of vertical search at Endeca, says the site is task- centric and created to be a “search engine for things to do in your free time. It does equally well for people planning a trip or sitting around the dinner table on Friday, wondering what they are going to do this weekend.”

It also approaches events in a way that Google may not. “Google gives answers for general purposes. But it understands keywords, not structured data. Plane tickets and other semantic information are not on Google,” he says. “We’re getting very focused results. We can sort Web data by price,” among other things.

The general model for search engines is to have a keyword and give back a URL, says Watkins. But Goby seeks to convert those Web pages to real world entities people can make decisions about. “We’ve cross-referenced photography from across the Web, and integrated more video types, and MP3 from concerts,” he says.

Another focus is to figure out how people decide to go to events. “We want to know: How did you decide to be at that restaurant?” says Watkins. It is the interaction of the search and gaming worlds, building off location-based sites like Foursquare and Gowalla.

Indeed, Watkins emphasizes that Goby.com is not just about events. “Events are really important. But they are one dimension of how we spend free time.” Travel is another aspect. “We’re coming at it like a search engine, as opposed to TripAdvisor,” he says. Travel is surprisingly local oriented and is more complementary to local than is generally realized, notes Watkins. More than half of queries — 55 percent — are typically near users.

As for revenues, the site expects to initially receive the lion’s share from affiliate and lead generation fees. It anticipates revenues from sites such as Priceline, and tour providers if it can recommend an Alcatraz tour in San Francisco, for instance. Or its personalization and recommendation engines can promote an Opera performance. When the site gets bigger, it will be more interesting to advertisers, says Watkins.

The site will also have a white label “pro” model for sites that might be licensed by media publishers, or travel suppliers.

Redbeacon, one of the new breed of social/local leads providers for SMBs, said it is now available throughout the entire Bay Area and teaming up with BigTent, a mega-moms network in the Bay Area with more than 100 local cells. BigTent will receive a revenue share carved from Redbeacon’s 10 percent commission.

The deal between BigTent and Redbeacon positions the company not only against Yellow Pages and other newbreed leads providers (i.e.m ServiceMagic, AlikeList, HelpHive, ThumbTack and Sears’ ServiceLive) but also against other sites that specifically tailor to moms (and women generally). These include sites such as Angie’s List and Center’d. It plays on the theory that some women are intimidated by home and trade professionals and may be more likely to seek out a social network for advice and recommendations.

For BigTent, the partnership marks the first time it has partnered with an organization to promote local businesses. It had previously worked deals with a number of national brands.

The BigTent news caps off a campaign to land associations and other organizations as partners. The results of the effort means that the site now boasts listings of 16,000 service pros with the badges of their organizations — a major trust factor. One of the key prizes has been the local branch of the Better Business Bureau, which previously hadn’t loaned out its list.

In other site developments, Redbeacon, which won the top prize as best new idea at TechCrunch 50 six months ago, is adding “Friendly Advice.” The feature lets friends comment on job bids (and the bidders). This complements the company’s matching engine, and reviews and ratings found on other parts of the site — including both positive and negative reviews.

“We’re crowd-sourcing recommendations and sharing,” says CEO Ethan Anderson. One added benefit is the viral element and the added exposure for Redbeacon: 500 views may become 2,500, he says.

Anderson notes that the company has been in a constant state of “iteration” since launching, and will only begin the process of raising money when it is satisfied with the end product. So far, the site has added several features, such as enabling private communications between consumers and providers in the middle of a bid and allowing providers to additional information upon request. “Consumers need lots of information to make a decision,” he says. The site has also syndicated reviews from Yelp, Google and Yahoo to complement its own.

One milestone reached by the site is that it can now successfully furnish a quote for every job that is bid. In fact, it had more than 1,000 service providers almost immediately after launch, and continues to rapidly grow its base. “We don’t have a chicken or egg problem,” says Anderson. “Signing up (service providers) has been easy.”

Redbeacon CEO Ethan Anderson will join AlikeList CEO Jim Delli Santi and Reply.com COO Sean Fox on the “SMB Marketplaces” panel at Marketplaces 2010. ServiceMagic CEO Craig Smith is a keynoter at the conference.

AT&T Interactive has put up a beta version of its new Buzz.com site dedicated to eliciting positive social recommendations and answers to questions from friends, friends of friends and throughout the Buzz site (which, unfortunately, may get confused with Google Buzz, which was developed after AT&T had announced plans for Buzz.com.)

The site’s main purpose is to zero in on nontraditional categories that aren’t really met by Yellow Pages (such as “romantic hotels”). While no advertising is currently being sold, it will be sold in the future. There is currently no plan to integrate with the reviews that users provide Yellowpages.com, or its new prototype, YP.com. Buzz.com users will have a different intent in mind.

The beta hooks in with Facebook Connect, and will roll out over several weeks after initially being limited to invites only. Project leader Charlie Hornberger notes that Buzz will eventually also be enabled for Twitter, instant messaging platforms, Q&A sites (such as Answers.com), and other social networks as well. “Social search is the future, but not in 2010” he says. As with AlikeList, which we also wrote about this week, the positive nature of a recommendations-only site represents “extremely qualified leads.”

Hornberger notes that the user interface remains a work in progress for the project team, which has less than two-dozen people. Initially, for instance, the site was going to limit its big red heart for favorites to a single choice. It quickly found out that people want to have multiple favorites. The site also currently has a list of favorites for each user. But in the future, that list might take more creative forms, such as tag clouds.

The site will also eventually feature “best recommenders.” Future versions may also have some aspects in sentimental analysis and reputation and presence management. AT&T is investing in these areas. But Buzz.com is actually a fairly simple idea. It just needs strong execution. “You don’t need a Ph.D.” for it, says Hornberger. Current plans are to market it virally, with some advertising on social media likely as well.

AT&Ti Executive Director Greg Isaacs is a featured speaker on the New Directories Panel at Marketplaces 2010, along with execs from Local Matters, SuperMedia and MerchantCircle. r

Philadelphia-based 7Mainstreet cofounder Andy Leff got the idea for his company about four years ago while driving to the grocery store. “I was listening to something on the radio about the success MySpace was having with helping rock bands promote themselves, and I thought no company is doing anything like that for small businesses.”

Leff and his father, Ron, have since worked together to build 7Mainstreet into a platform for small businesses to establish a presence online that doesn’t just present listings content but enables them to sell inventory, interact with customers via social tools like blogs, post video, visual images and so on.

It’s kind of like the old storefront concept married with the modern Internet Yellow Pages. Rather than a business listing or info page, the standard offering for a small-business advertising is a commerce-enabled micro site. Andy Leff says one point to emphasize is that advertisers using a microsite can have total control over their environment, where on some sites, their presence can be cluttered by banner ads for competing or even conflicting messages.

The Leffs are currently trying to convince directory publishers, newspapers, catalogs and business-to-business publishers, among others, to white label their solution as a platform for selling online advertising and services to their small-business customers. In particular they’ve focused on the independent publisher space and to date have announced one client, Illinois-based Eagle Publications.

This is a crowded space, but the Leffs believe they have a key point of difference in their emphasis on enabling commerce, rather than just establishing presence.

We asked how 7Mainstreet drives traffic, which is the main challenge facing any independent publisher trying to build an online presence. The answer is a combination of things — all the sites are listed in a common database so all customers benefit from wider exposure than just the publishers that sold them the microsite. Plus 7Mainstreet is active in link building and other efforts to drive traffic.

Andy Leff also says it’s important to level with small businesses about the role they play in the performance of the site.

“You can buy a gym membership, but to get the muscles you need to show up and do bench presses,” Andy says. “If [SMBs] do not use [the microsites], they will not get full benefit. They need to put as much information in there as possible in order to improve their search ranking.”

Here’s a question: How long would directory publishers sit back and let new companies such as RedBeacon, AlikeList and others disrupt the leads economy for SMBs with search and socially driven features such as Twitter and Facebook? Or Google, with Place Pages? That’s a question that Local Matters and other Yellow Pages  vendors have obviously asked themselves.

Now Local Matters has come out with “Destination Search,” a new social platform that seeks to level the search and social playing field for its U.S. and international clients, which so far includes  Dex B2B in the U.S;  Truvo, European Directories and Pagini Aurii in Europe;  and Yellow Pages Group in New Zealand.

Playing off a feature set originally developed for real estate multiple listings services, Local Matters’ platform includes state of the art social and search features. It also seeks to leverage existing strengths, such as business profile information.

Key features of the white label solution include enhanced profile listings; search optimization; integration (and easy sharing) with Facebook and Twitter; blog enablement; ratings and reviews ported from Yelp and other sources; and the addition of social media feeds on assorted online advertising.

Kris Skavish, Vice President of Products and Marketing, told us that Local Matters started planning Destination Search last September, with the specific intent of focusing on building rich local context. “A problem with online directories has been search relevancy,” she noted.

Another challenge has been to reconcile Yellow Pages headings with most searched categories, which are typically microheadings. “’Plumbers’ is too broad. You need to get to the correct root,” said Skavish, noting that Local Matters has also created custom microheadings for categories such as hotels and attorneys.

For instance, “romantic hotels” might be sought out in user generated content but not generally included as a category. Users can also rate pictures included in romantic hotels.  Publishers can also insert content at the top of the page, or refine results. They can also create brand oriented categories, such as “Toyota.”

While Destination Search leveraged Local Matters’ work with real estate Multiple Listing Services,  important differences revealed themselves, added Skavish. “With the MLS,  you prove your value with a lead ” she notes. “It isn’t a ranking model.  And in real estate, the default view is maps. But with Yellow Pages, it is an ad model. You want users to make an action.”

Local Matters CEO Mat Stover is a featured speaker at Marketplaces 2010 March 22-24 in San Diego.

Serial Web entrepreneur Mark H. Goldstein  has been the founder of such sites as Kmart’s BlueLight and Impulse Buy. More recently, he invested in green ecology-based ventures, but he grew bored and came back to ecommerce with Loyalty Lab and  Home-Account.com, which matched homeowners with mortgage brokers, competing with the likes of LendingTree , Bankrate.com and Zillow’s Mortgage Marketplace (whose free to the consumer model is similar).

Today, Goldstein launched a sister site, Refinance.com, which is using the same engine as Home-Account to match refinance prospects with the lowest “TrueCost” loan over time.   Both services rely on a matching system developed with Jack M. Guttenberg, better known as “The Mortgage Professor.” They also collect recommendations and reviews, marrying social networking with leads.

Goldstein contends that the free matching service is far superior to lead generation sites such as Lending Tree, which provide consumers with lists of five or six brokers.  That doesn’t help consumers much, he argues. They’re almost as poorly informed as when they started.

“We’re getting rid of the ‘last mile human being’ and pinpointing exactly the right product,” says Goldstein, noting that consumers will still have an option to self-select their brokers. “They don’t have to take the first one, the second or third.”

The site is currently launching local and regional lenders, with hundreds of lenders ready to sign on.  Goldstein’s timing, however, would appear to be shaky, with many banks still very conservative in their lending practices, post TARP mode.

But  Goldstein contends  “they do want to lend,” and notes that real estate has been in recovery for the past six months. Lending Tree has been doing good business, for example. And Bankrate.com was just taken private in October for $700 million.

“There are very specific people they want to lend to,” says Goldstein.  “What we do is make you look as good as possible before the lender picks up the phone. “

Three years ago, BIA/Kelsey created the Marketplaces research program and conference because we saw that local advertising was quickly “verticalizing.” Indeed, money and talent have poured in for the new breed of vertical products that would take their place among existing vertical success stories, such as AutoTrader, Cars.com, Realtor.com and ServiceMagic.

The Marketplaces 2010 conference reveals just how fast the industry has evolved. This year’s event, now under construction, is set to highlight all the major trends in Marketplaces, including:

• AOL’s $50 million investment in Patch.com, and ongoing transformation of its Mediaglow vertical properties (and Mapquest)
• eBay’s renewed efforts to build up classifieds as entry-level e-commerce via Kijiji, eBay Motors and other services
• Examiner.com’s  big bet on local/vertical content, and its network of 26,000 “examiners.”
• Groupon’s “smart mob” theory of local commerce, backed by a $32 million investment, that allows hundreds to make a volume purchase of local services and products.
• Redbeacon, AlikeList and others’ efforts to remake ServiceMagic-like home and trade leads with social media
• Adify and Pulse360’s  bid to verticalize ad networks for local merchants and national brands
• OpenTable’s big bet on mobile to let diners make reservations wherever they are.

The two-day conference takes full advantage of its location in sunny San Diego. It includes rich research presentations, top-flight demos of the latest services, and a preconference showcasing all the best tools of Marketplaces 2010. Come to San Diego March 22-24 to learn, enjoy the unbeatable networking and participate. You can register at early-bird rates here.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS (in Alpha)

• Ethan Anderson, CEO, Redbeacon
• Jeff Beard, CEO, Localeze
• Rick Blair, CEO, Examiner.com
• Jon Brod, EVP, AOL*
• Craig Donato, CEO, Oodle
• Jim Delli Santi, CEO, AlikeList
• Todd Dubner, SVP, NCI
• Russ Fradin, CEO, Adify
• Krista Glotzbach, VP, Vast.com
• Mark Goldstein, Chairman, Loyalty Labs
• Martin Herbst, GM, Kijiji U.S., eBay
• Scott Jampol, Senior Director, Marketing, OpenTable
• Jaan Janes, CEO, Pulse 360
• David Kidder, CEO, Clickable
• Steve Larsen, CEO, CallSpark
• Andrew Mason, CEO, GroupOn*
• Colin Pape, CEO, ShopCity
• Ben Saren, CEO, CitySquares
• Craig Smith, President, ServiceMagic
• Mat Stover, CEO, Local Matters
• David Vazdauskas, President, Local Thunder

*keynote

MSNBC.com’s EveryBlock is moving beyond its roots as a hard-core aggregator of hyperlocal data with its first social feature: “Notify Your Neighbors.” The feature, which has been tested for over a month, is similar to other sites, such as Rottenneighbor.com, a real estate tool discontinued in July 2009 that let people complain about barking dogs, overgrown lawns, loud pool parties and smelly garbage.

Notify Your Neighbors has a link near the top of each place page on the site. When users click on it, they get a simple form that lets them post a message. Once they’ve posted it, EveryBlock will publish it to each nearby neighborhood, ZIP and block page so other users can see it. It will also go out as an “announcement” in e-mail alerts and RSS feeds for the appropriate geographic areas.

Site founder Adrian Holovaty says he expects Notify Your Neighbors to get most of its traffic from items where people are “highly incented” to post. He’s guessing that missing pets will top the list, along with crime incidents. Garage rentals, missing mailboxes, water main flooding and community events are other likely topics.

“Use it for classifieds, use it to report local news, use it to ask questions or otherwise pass information to your neighbors … Use it for things we haven’t thought of! You can think of it as a 21st century community message board,” notes EveryBlock’s release.

In other site news, Holovaty says the six-person site has been redesigning its place pages to make them time sensitive. This would make them more of a real-time feed a la Twitter. Some things may be of immediate interest, such as the arrival of a taco truck.

The year-end money deals continue. Today, The San Jose Business Journal reports that Center’d has raised another $1.875 million on top of the $6.5 million it previously raised.  The two-year-old, mom-friendly local search and events planning site, initially launched as “FatDoor,” is led by former Yahoo Marketplaces head Jennifer Dulski and former Microsoft maps exec Chandu Thota. Among its board members is former <a href=”http://www.intuit.com”>Intuit</a> head Bill Harris.

The site is working to differentiate itself from competitors on the city guide side such as Citysearch and Yelp, and on the events side such as Eventful, Zvents and American Towns with an orientation toward mothers, and features such as “Sentiment Analysis,” which, like Marchex’s OpenList,  semantically analyzes what people are saying about local places on the Web, sucking in information from local and travel review sites, review aggregators and blogs.

Verticals that can engage certain demographics on a socio/geo basis and drive loyalty and conversion are the basis of our Marketplaces research program.  A new one that has caught our eye is WineTwits from HappyHours.com founder Steve Gilberg.  Three years ago, HappyHours and Lawn and Garden Search were among the first verticals that made us think there was another side to marketplaces beyond the big classified categories.

Gilberg tells us that the development of WineTwits started a year ago when his team was fooling around with Twitter to see what it could do for the online wine retailers that he works with. “We quickly had a few thousand followers, and we were moving cases of wine. In one 24-hour period, we sold $16,000 of wine,” he says.

As the site comes out of beta, it now has 45,000 followers. It is currently poised to promote wine more aggressively, and work local channels to promote wine stores, specials and wine events. “Our business model is to create a platform that will organize conversations around wine,” says Gilberg.

The WineTwits platform is essentially made up of two products: “WineTwits Mobile” and “WineTwits Live.”  Mobile allows event planners, retailers and restaurants to create lists of wines being tasted at specific events, and build a feedback community,  like a specialized version of Foursquare. WineTwits Live allows event producers to project the tweets on screen, and upload interstitial advertising.

The platform has already been applied in November at The City Winery event in New  York, where it was called “Spit and Twit.” The company  is also in discussion to apply the tech for the San Francisco Vintners Market event in April.

The ultimate vision, says Gilberg, is to apply lessons from the WineTwits experience to several adjacent products.  “CigarTwits,” “RumTwits” and “TequilaTwits” are all on the horizon.