The vision for Hyperlocal – if you believe in it — boils down to two camps. The first camp says it is a labor of love that must be hand-curated to work with merchants and engage the citizenry, town-by-town. Perhaps sites can use shopping and other directory tools, like Local Thunder and ShopCity, to tie things together and scale.

That’s The Batavian for you. GoLocal24. The Magic City Post. And Baristanet. That goes for hyper-vertical sites too, like MedCity.

The second camp says that that the only realistic and scalable opportunity is in a centrally managed operation, providing tools, strategy and branding. Local managers and writers –and sometimes, local media brands, for credibility — might also be involved. With 864 local sites, that’s what AOL’s Patch is. And on a smaller scale, Main Street Connect and DataSphere.

Some people think of these sites as money holes, suffering very high churn from very needy SMB customers, and very small, fragmented audiences. Others think they have the kind of vision that will lead to real success.

Today we focus on DataSphere, whose funding has now reached $32.5 million, with an $8 million infusion this week by First Analysis as well as existing venture capital partners Ignition Partners and OVP Venture Partners. Fisher Communications, the northwestern TV station group, participated in earlier rounds.

DataSphere’s been working with TV stations around the U.S., using their brands and promotional capability to sell services to local SMBs. For the TV stations, these are all new dollars – the TV stations don’t traditionally sell to them.

To work with DataSphere, the stations (and other media partners) essentially had to reach the conclusion that they were never going to attack this market themselves, and that they didn’t mind splitting revenues they would not have otherwise made. These are probably fair assumptions: more so for a TV station than a newspaper.

In a recent discussion with us, SVP Gary Cowan said that DataSphere has found a sweet spot with SMBs, focusing on expertly targeted coupons and other features to show “clear and demonstrable value.” The coupons are broadly distributed, not only on local landing pages, but across a larger network of relevant sites, such as Coupons.com.

The company now boasts 100 media partners, and its ads are now targeted across more than 1,900 neighborhoods. Gannett, Fisher and Meredith are among its largest customers. It has 420 employees overall, mostly sales, and the majority of them work phone banks in Bellevue, WA and Tempe, AZ.

Hyperlocal is a core focus at ILM East, which features AOL Local’s Mark Josephson, Consultant Merrill Brown, Main Street Connect’s Zohar Yardeni, GoLocal24′s Josh Fenton and Fisher Communications’ Randa Minkarah. Register Here.

Here’s what we’ve been waiting to announce: Google Offers’ head Nitin Mangtani will join our great list of keynoters at ILM East March 26-28 in Boston. We believe Mangtani’s appearance marks one of the first public debuts of Google Offers, which is playing a major role in Google’s vital local strategy, along with Google Places, Google Maps and Zagat ratings and reviews.

Previously announced ILM East keynoters include Groupon Vice Chair +++ Ted Leonsis; American Express SVP of Social Media Leslie Berland; CityGrid Media CEO Jay Herratti; New York Times Research Ops VP Michael Zimbalist; and New York Magazine Digital GM Michael Silberman.

Mangtani joins Google Channel Sales BizDev Head Christine Merritt at ILM East. Merritt will provide Google’s perspective on its emergence in the local ecosystem, and the most effective way to work with Google as a partner.

The next wave of Deals is, in general, a key focus for us at ILM East, along with mobile local media, social local media, video local media, hyperlocal and locally targeted national advertising.

In addition to the keynotes from Google Offers and Groupon, we have a special Day 1 session dedicated to the next wave of deals, featuring EverSave’s Jere Doyle; Find n Save’s Christopher Tippie; Closely’s Perry Evans; and Boomtime’s Bill Bice. That session will be followed by a broader view of deals and ecommerce, which featured NextJump’s Charlie Kim; Cartera’s Jim Douglass; and Bundle.com’s Jaidev Shergill.

Other recent adds to the program include The Boston Globe’s Lisa DeSisto, who joins Boston.com VP of Digital Products Jeff Moriarty as a presenter; and MIT Sloan Associate Professor Catherine Tucker, who gives the low down on the effectiveness of local social media.

Before the show, we’re making a special trip to The Boston Globe’s R&D Lab (Limited Space, RSVP required). Or come to Andrew Shotland’s SEO for the Enterprise session, which also features SEO Expert Will Scott and Advance Digital Media VP John Denny. We’re looking forward to a great show.

Venture Capital
•David Hornik, Principal, August Capital
•Scott Maxwell, Senior Managing Director, OpenView

Mobile Local Media
• Walt Doyle, CEO, Where
• Doug McDonald, Director, dotMobi
• John Valentine, VP, East Coast, SCVNGR/LevelUp

Hyperlocal
• Merrill Brown, Principal, MMB Media
• Josh Fenton, CEO, GoLocal24
• Zohar Yardeni, CEO, Main Street Connect

Social Local Media
• Geoff Cramer, CEO, Social Made Simple
• Adam Japko, President, Digital Sherpa
• Jeff Moriarty, VP, Digital Products, Boston.com
• Mark Schmulen, GM, Social Media, Constant Contact

Video
• Juan Delgado, Managing Director, Americas, Perform
• John McIntyre, CEO, Pixelfish
• Randa Minkarah, SVP, Revenue, Fisher Communications

Deals and Promotional Ecosystem
• Bill Bice, CEO, BoomTime
• Jere Doyle, President and CEO, EverSave
• Perry Evans, CEO, Closely
• Christopher Tippie, CEO, FindNSave

Transactions
• Charlie Kim, CEO, NextJump
• Jim Douglass, EVP, Retail Advertising, Cartera Commerce
• Jaidev Shergill, CEO, Bundle

National/Brands
•Adam Epstein, President, AdMarketplace
•Pete Gombert,CEO, Balihoo
• Steve Sherfy, Local & Mobile Search, GroupMSearch
• Karl Siebrecht, President and CEO, AdReady

Elections 2012
• Andy Slater, VP, Digital Agency Sales, Katz 360

SMB Marketing
• Dave Galvan, President, Schedulicity
• Maria Kermath, Director, AT&T Ad Solutions
• Randy Parker, President, SMBApps
• Darren Waddell, EVP, Reply.com

Sign up now (and hint: reserve your room earlier rather than later).

Yelp is IPOing today at $15 a share, allowing it to raise $123 million on a valuation of $900 million –$400 million more than it was apparently offered by Google a couple of years ago.

We know from the S1 that Yelp earned $58.4 million in net revenue in the first nine months of 2011, representing 80 percent growth over the first nine months of 2010. It also has 22 million reviews, and sees 61 million monthly users.

During the first nine months of 2011, the company claimed 19,000 paid accounts – up 75 percent from the same period in 2010, And 529,000 claimed pages –up 114 percent. Its ability to convert claimed pages into paid accounts is going to be where the action is.

It must also continue to penetrate deeper into restaurants, amidst tough competition from Google/Zagat and others. At the same time, it must continue to expand beyond restaurants deeper into shopping and services.

Restaurants and dining now make up 23 percent. Other major segments include shopping (22 percent), services (10 percent); beauty (9 percent); arts and entertainment (8 percent); Health (5 percent) Night Life (4 percent) and Travel and Hotel (4 percent). It also has a broad demographic, with 42 percent between the ages of 18-34, and 33 percent between the ages of 35-49.

It’s safe to say that Ted Leonsis is at the center of the local revolution. He’s done it all, from his early days trying to jumpstart ecommerce at RedGate, to his work building a local framework at AOL (i.e. Mapquest, Digital City, MovieFone, Studio Now); to his current role as Vice Chair, Groupon; Board Member, Amex; a Principal with the $450 Million Revolution Growth Fund; and of course, as owner of The Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards and The Verizon Center.

What is Ted’s Take on key local issues? We’re talking live with Ted Monday at 3pm pacific/12 pm eastern in conjunction with his keynote at ILM East in Boston, which takes place March 28.

Sign up for the free Webinar. Registrants also get a discount code towards the conference, which is March 26-28.

ILM East is coming back to Boston March 26-28 with a lineup of do-ers and innovators that are transforming and re-defining the local space.

Highlights include a featured keynote from industry legend Ted Leonsis (Groupon Vice Chair/Amex Board Member/Sports team owner/AOL mastermind), along with keynotes/interviews from Jason Calacanis, Leslie Berland, Jay Herratti, Michael Zimbalist and Michael Silberman.

Other highlights of the 2 ½ day event includes a pre-conference rundown on Local search run by Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide; a full plate of Top BIA/Kelsey research and forecasts; a special Venture Capital panel; and innovator panels on Social, Mobile, Deals, Video and Hyperlocal (the latter co-moderated with Merrill Brown.)

KEYNOTES/KEYNOTE DISCUSSIONS
• Ted Leonsis: Owner, Monumental Sports (Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards;) The Vice Chair of Groupon;, Board member of Amex, former Vice Chair of AOL; Author, The Business of Happiness
• Jason Calacanis: CEO, Mahalo; Investor. Calacanis’ career has been at the cutting edge of local and social media and reflects all the big trends, from his development of The Silicon Alley Reporter to Weblogs (AOL), Mahalo, and the creation of TechCrunch50 and Launch.
• Leslie Berland, Vice President, Social Strategy, American Express. Berland’s a major deal maker deeply involved in Amex’s mega FourSquare and Facebook deals.
• Jay Herratti, CEO, CityGrid Media. Herratti always gets top rankings at our events. He runs IAC’s super quad of the CityGrid Media Network, Citysearch, UrbanSpoon and InsiderPages.
• Michael Zimbalist, VP, Research Operations, New York Times Co. Zimbalist leads the NYT’s 12 person research unit. He’s deeply immersed in cutting edge social, mobile, tablet and video efforts.
• Michael Silberman, GM, New York Magazine Silberman is the mastermind of NYMag’s development of a super set of verticals catering to the “New York state of mind.”).

FEATURED SPEAKERS
• Bill Bice, CEO, SpaBoom
• Merrill Brown, co-founder. MSNBC.com, Court TV
• Jim Douglass, EVP, Cartera Commerce
• Jere Doyle, CEO, EverSave
• Walt Doyle, CEO, Where
• Adam Japko, CEO, Digital Sherpa
• Maria Kermath, Dir.,, New Tech & Sales Apps, AT&T Advertising Sales
• Mark Josephson, SVP, AOL Local
• Charlie Kim, CEO, Next Jump
• John McIntyre, CEO, Pixelfish
• Randa Minkarah, SVP, Revenue, Fisher Communications
• Randy Parker, President, SMB Apps
• Mark Schmulen, GM, Social Media, Constant Contact
• Andrew Shotland, Publisher, Local SEO Guide
• Andy Slater, VP, Digital Agency Sales, Katz 360
• Christopher Tippie, CEO, FindNSave
• Darren Waddell, EVP, Product and Corporate Marketing, Reply.com

Join hundreds of senior level local executives at ILM East for the local community’s best networking and insights. You can register here for earlier bird rates.

Internet Pioneer Ted Leonsis

The decline of newspaper readership opens a door for other media to head the news cycle, with everything else trickling down to the TV and radio stations and Web sites that feed off the original content.

That’s the premise for GoLocal24, a local news and lifestyle content company that started with a website and broadcast partnerships in Providence, R.I., and will add a Worchester, MA site in February. The site has seed funding from Angel Street Capital and 10 people on staff — including a well known local news personality.

Founder Josh Fenton says he lived-and-breathed the news cycle as a Hill staffer in Washington, and later as the owner of an ad and PR agency. The decline of newspaper readership has convinced him that there “is a likelihood that the newspaper that drives the news cycle will cease to exist. Already, newspapers have “no relevance” to most consumers under 45 years old, he says.

Launched last year, GoProv is likely partially responsible for a decline of Belo’s Providence Journal website, which Fenton says is down 30-40 percent since last summer. Local readers “have had a choice for the last 12 months. We’ve broken more news stories” – quite a claim for such a small site, given the large newsroom that The Providence Journal has.

Multi-channel targeting is the key, notes Fenton. Right now, GoProv is acting as the news source for Channnel 10 NBC and four Clear Channel radio stations. “We go on drive time with the big story of the day, and also to their websites, where we are the local news widget,” he says. Some of the stories, in fact, break on the broadcast stations, then push back to the Website. In addition to breaking news, GoProv is producing a five minute clip of daily news, using two anchors.

Video, in fact, is seen as a great asset as the site preps its Worcester, MA site. Living in the shadow of Boston, there is no network TV station affiliate in Worcester, although it is a city of one million people. “You never have Worcester or Worcester county news on the Boston stations, unless something really horrific happens,” says Fenton.

Social media also plays a major role in building the company. Roughly 20 percent of its traffic derives from Facebook, where it has 85,000 social relationships between fan pages, writers, friends and other social assets, notes Fenton. That number may be ramped up more as additional media outlets come on board. The company is currently in discussions with a sports radio group.

Leveraging a social competency is also a vital component for the company’s advertising relationships. More than 30 advertisers buy a broad package that can include display ads, rich media, email promotions, inclusion in deals and social blasts. The site, in fact, has been cash flow positive since it was seven months old.

No one talks much about certain topics after public crashes – even when the opportunity remains clear. Hyperlocal is one of these. TBD.com in Washington DC crashed last February, and there is a lot of speculation that Patch.com has become a cash drain on AOL.com and is not sustainable (although CEO Tim Armstrong asserts that several of the largest Patch sites will be in the black in 2013 and that the site remains a definite “go.”)

Meanwhile, the dream lives on, and lots of independent and regional hyperlocal initiatives, in addition to Patch, are still going at it — and should go at it. Main Street Connect, a northeast site, has raised $7 million of new funding and added a new CEO. Many newspapers have launched various hyperlocal sections. The Boston Globe’s YourTown, for instance, has 50 town sites.

Local Thunder, ShopCity and American Towns also have hyperlocal products that emphasize hyperlocal commerce as much as hyperlocal journalism (arguably, an equally important part of a community buzz). A new venture is GoLocal 24, which launched GoLocalProv in Providence in 2010 and is launching GoLocal Worcester.

As an article in today’s Boston Globe points out, GoLocalProv was founded by Josh Fenton, a former advertising executive who grew up in Providence. His cofounder was Paul Krasinski, a Newton native and executive with Arbitron (and brother of The Office’s John Krasinski.) The website employs 10 reporters, including a well known local TV personality.

The article notes that the Providence site became profitable after seven months, and closed a second round of financing in December from Angel Street Capital and local investors.

CBS plans to build deeper local online content by commissioning specific local topics for articles from thousands of writers at Examiner.com. Both parties were mum about whether there is revenue sharing involved, but did note that writers will receive a different payment plan than they receive on Examiner.com.

Leonard Brody, president of Clarity Digital, which is Examiner’s parent company, told BIA/Kelsey that the economics of the deal will make it profitable for both companies. Examiner has been approached by many media companies to lend its editorial resources. While such loaners of editorial resources aren’t likely to become a dominant revenue stream, “you may see us do a few more of these,” he says. CBS, for its part, is free to also work with other content aggregators and developers.

CBS brings to the table a network of 15+ city sites, such as CBS Denver, CBS Los Angeles, etc. Some sites have had customized Examiner.com content since December 5. “It is a great showcase, and brings great reach for content. It also provides strong credibility via the CBS brand,” says Brody.

While Examiner’s content for CBS will have some branding elements on it, the intent is not to bring people to Examiner.com, Brody emphasizes. It is CBS’ audience. CBS Local Media President Ezra Kucharz adds that the deal with Examiner is “a great way to augment our great content in local markets.”

One of our big complaints against hyperlocal sites is they haven’t really invested in the commercial lifeblood of their community. They’re more like the (almost totally irrelevant) equivalent of a public access cable TV channel.

That’s why we like the approach of ShopCity, which lets hyperlocal sites, chambers of commerce, local publishers and local governments use a platform that provide enhanced listings, transactions and social media tools for SMBs.

Two former Gatehouse digital staff, in particular, have taken out new ShopCity sites: Emily Lowry, who launched The Magic City Post ‘s ShopBirmingham,after working on ShopBuffalo last year; and well known journalism blogger and executive Howard Owens, who today launched ShopBatavia. The sites make me want to go out and use ShopCity to launch a shopping site for my own town.

The sites are new for ShopCity, which now has 30 local sites around the U.S. and Canada. The company has also launched ShopLocally, which is kind of a networked “greatest hits site” comprising the best of ShopCity sites.

Owens notes in today’s The Batavian that “ShopBatavia.com isn’t just another ‘hope they find us’ business directory with nothing more than a picture and a few words about your business.

“With ShopBatavia.com, merchants can actually sell online, offer specials, discounts, coupons, daily deals, product information, set up newsletters for direct marketing, integrate with Facebook and Twitter, answer customer questions and do it all in an environment that is professional and backed by same-day phone support,” says Owens.

Owens adds that “ShopBatavia.com is bolstered by the marketing power of The Batavian, with its thousands of daily local readers and thousands of Facebook fans.”

ILM West is shaping up to be one of the great ones. Taking place Dec. 12-14 in downtown San Francisco, ILM West really reflects a sea change in local marketing from advertising to the new hybrid model of advertising and commerce (i.e. prepaid deals, reputation management, mobile app sales etc.).

We’ve made some big additions since our last update, starting with Google and Facebook. These add to the existing lineup, including our “rock stars” (Clear Channel CEO and industry legend Bob Pittman AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, Media News Group/Journal Register CEO John Paton and Deseret Media and former Harvard Business School Professor Clark Gilbert), and major sessions on deals, offers, verticals and the whole spectrum of local trends.

We will pursue three unique angles on Google at ILM West:

1- The local efforts, under Marissa Mayer’s local team. Jeff Aguero, head of local marketing, will present on everything local, from Zagat, to Google Places, to the Big G’s new “Get Online” program for SMBs. These strategies have really developed since this summer.

2- The global reseller effort. Global Channels head Todd Rowe will engage in an in-depth conversation with BIA/Kelsey President Neal Polachek on all his efforts.

3- Google Mobile. Mobile and Local Search exec Surojit Chatterjee will provide insights into this critical area for Google as part of our All SoLoMo morning on Day 3.

We’re also going deep with Facebook at ILM West. Facebook’s new local leader Matt Idema is our afternoon keynote on Day 2, with a lot of new details and a progress report on the local and vertical strategies. On Day 1, we are also taking a special look at working with Facebook’s platform with execs from Trada, Oodle and Kenshoo Local/Social weighing in. Eager but not sure how to play with Facebook? You will be when ILM West is done.

The SoLoMo event on Day 3 itself is going to be quite the cornerstone for ILM West. Curated by the research teams from our Social Local Media and Mobile Local Media programs, SoLoMo features top line data; and indepth and fresh looks at SoLoMo implementations from leaders at Google, AT&T Interactive, Zaarly, PayPal, XAd, JiWire and AppStack (Steve Espinosa’s new project.)

You can see the full agenda here. And register here.

Remember: We are making a donation to the SF/Marin County Food Bank for all registrations that come in by Thanksgiving.