Outside.in Business Review Including a Peek at Their Secret Sauce (video)

Brooklyn-based Outside.in presented their business updates yesterday and I’ve embedded the video below. CEO Mark Josephson explained how Outside.in works and why "place matters" and why things near you matter. He noted that local hasn’t been done right yet (of course his product gets it right) because you may have multiple communities in the same ZIP code that are very different.

Their "radar" product lets you monitor local items in a FriendFeed-style fashion. Not sure how it knows which Twitter posts are in which area at precisely that moment but hey it’s Web 2.0! Seriously, if they can do this well, it could be a strong offering – especially when breaking news (earthquake, typhoon, lack of hot Krispy Kremes) hits an area.

Josephson ended by showing us some of their secret sauce with regards to their algorithm and how they decide who is local and what content is local. It’s towards the end of the video below if you want to skip to that part.

FYI – Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch was also at the event and has prepared a good review of the VC sections of the event.