Center'd News

Center'd Launches the First Local Planning Site That Integrates Local Search, Planning Tools and Social Networking

MENLO PARK, Calif., June 18 PRNewswire — Center'd (www.centerd.com), a new local planning site that ties together local search, planning and community features in one place, today announced that it has opened the "first draft" of its site to the public. Led by former Microsoft and Yahoo! executives with expertise in local, mapping and commerce, Center'd is the only site on the Web that provides an integrated way to manage all the core elements of local planning: picking a place, agreeing on a time, selecting service providers, sending invites, managing volunteers, hosting and communicating. By providing tools for the entire local planning workflow, Center'd helps with both group and personal planning, from simple to complex events, to help people discover new places to go and things to do based on the opinions of trusted friends.

Innovative Approach to Local and Planning

Center'd puts people back in control of local planning by allowing them to manage all the key elements in one experience, rather than the tedious techniques people use to plan today, which include endless email chains, multiple websites, spreadsheets, phone messages, and parking lot conversations, among others.

Some of the innovative features that Center'd has developed to create seamless local planning include:

— Social Graph that Includes Both People and Places: By connecting people and places in one social graph, people can get a more relevant and personalized local search and browse experience by viewing places that matter to their friends. In addition, Center'd provides a new way to connect to people by showing the places they have in common, such as schools, organizations or their favorite restaurants. This approach is more purposeful in a local context and better represents people's everyday lives compared to one-dimensional social graphs.

— Power of the Trusted Few Plus the Wisdom of Crowds: In addition to getting a quick-read on places through the opinions of trusted friends, Center'd has aggregated ratings and reviews from around the Web so people can get a quick snapshot of what the general Web audience thinks.

— Marriage of Local Search and Planning Tools: Center'd combines local search information with planning tools to make the planning process more seamless. People can quickly start plans from a search result page or detail page for any place, or easily select and map places while using the planning functionality.

— Polling and Task Management Tools: Center'd provides features that make even complex events and activities easier to plan by enabling organizers to poll guests to find out what time and place works best for everyone and to recruit and manage volunteers with online sign-up sheets.

— Local Browse and Discovery: People can explore different neighborhoods through a unique browsing experience, save places and share them with friends.

"Center'd brings a new, innovative approach to local planning that will resonate with both consumers and advertisers trying to reach valuable audiences," said Jennifer Dulski, co-founder and chief executive officer of Center'd. "By combining local information, planning functionality and trusted community elements, we believe we have found a solution to quickly scale a local business online. From day one, the tools will work as well in Scranton as they do in San Francisco."

Center'd is at the nexus of a quickly growing market and a valuable audience marketers are seeking to reach. Local online advertising is expected to grow 58 percent in 2008, eventually to a total of $7.8 billion by 2011.(i) Meanwhile, marketers are spending more money online to reach valuable audiences, such as heads of households, which the Center'd offering is well positioned to attract. To reach this audience, consumer packaged goods companies alone are expected to spend $1.2 billion in online advertising in 2008, up 29 percent from the previous year.(ii)

"Center'd helps realize the confluence of local and social applications that enables personalized local search based on you and your friends' opinions," said Chandu Thota, co-founder and chief technology officer of Center'd. "By exploiting the intersection of these two elements, we can begin to present a more relevant and valuable local search and discovery experience."

The Center'd Team

Center'd is helmed by former Microsoft and Yahoo! executives who bring a wealth of industry and management experience to the company.

Chief executive officer Jennifer Dulski joined Center'd after spending nearly a decade at Yahoo! where she held a variety of senior executive roles, most recently as group vice president and general manager of Local Markets and Commerce. In that role, she was responsible for the strategy, operations and P&L for Yahoo!'s local, maps, shopping, travel, autos and real estate businesses.

Chandu Thota, chief technology officer, came to Center'd from Microsoft, where he was the lead developer for Microsoft Virtual Earth. Chandu has authored three technology books and is listed as an inventor on over twenty patent applications related to geo-spatial mapping and technology.

To start making plans with the "First Draft" of Center'd, visit www.centerd.com.

About Center'd

Center'd is a local planning site that ties together local search, planning tools, and trusted community to make planning easier. By marrying these three elements, Center'd gives people a way to seamlessly manage the core elements of planning: picking a place, agreeing on a time, selecting service providers, sending invites, managing volunteers, hosting and communicating. From basic local activities like figuring out what to do this weekend to more complex plans like organizing a school event that needs volunteers, Center'd provides the tools to get it done. Ultimately, Center'd aims to make local planning so easy that people make even more plans to spend time with the people that matter to them. Center'd is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and is funded by Norwest Venture Partners, KeyNote Ventures, and private angel investors.

www.centerd.com (i) eMarketer, August 2007 (ii) eMarketer, Nov. 2007

SOURCE Center'd

Send this news item to a friend.

Print This Page