Backfence's intentions were good trying to stay local and get people talking locally, but burning through 3 million dollars to scale 13 smaller cities in the U.S. doesn't normally translate well for success. It's a difficult proposition to play while hoping to hit that tipping point, where growth becomes self-sustaining. In fact, I think you will find that Topix.com has accomplished some of Backfence's local conversation goals with a more scaleable approach.
At MerchantCircle, we started with the idea that we had to grow, not only in big cities, but small as well. There's a lot of 'local' companies who are playing one side or the other right now - either starting in big cities and trying to work their way down, or smaller and work their way up.
We've been fortunate in the fact that we just hit 150,000 merchants signed on this week after over a year of having launched. Those 150k are coming from big cities (Phoenix, Denver) and small (Tucson, Colorado Springs). We have penetrated every state and every region and type of business. We figured, if we built every business a customizable page that could be found in the search engines - they would come. They understand and are engaging in creating content, including building coupons and blogging.
So far, no slowdown in sight. It's sad to see Backfence go, but good people will land on their feet. These guys clearly know the local media space and had incredible passion along side of that knowledge.
All Comments
At MerchantCircle, we started with the idea that we had to grow, not only in big cities, but small as well. There's a lot of 'local' companies who are playing one side or the other right now - either starting in big cities and trying to work their way down, or smaller and work their way up.
We've been fortunate in the fact that we just hit 150,000 merchants signed on this week after over a year of having launched. Those 150k are coming from big cities (Phoenix, Denver) and small (Tucson, Colorado Springs). We have penetrated every state and every region and type of business. We figured, if we built every business a customizable page that could be found in the search engines - they would come. They understand and are engaging in creating content, including building coupons and blogging.
So far, no slowdown in sight. It's sad to see Backfence go, but good people will land on their feet. These guys clearly know the local media space and had incredible passion along side of that knowledge.
Sincerely,
Kevin Leu
www.merchantcircle.com