eBay has purchased the Boston-based local discovery service WHERE for what sources say could be as much as $135 million. The acquisition of WHERE provides a site that could potentially rival the ever popular Yelp.com and an array of other beneficial sectors from the WHERE mobile application to their mobile ad network that reportedly has over 100,000 advertisers to date.

With steps to integrate WHERE into Paypal, there will be endless possibilities for targeting local business and services. Not only will this new system simplify local advertising but also offer faster searches, easier payment methods and special local deals for prime customers.
Earlier in 2010, eBay also acquired Milo, a company that keeps track of a store’s real-time product inventory so that customers can check if an item is in stock. Working with big names like Best Buy and Target, this service simplifies a customer’s shopping experience and provides them with quick and easy access to the information they need.

If the right people are involved with WHERE’s future, and with Milo already under their belt, there is great potential for a powerful integrated local network that can rival most companies online and in the increasingly popular mobile applications field.

Thousands of businesses will be able to send customers local specials and information directly to their mail or mobile device where they can easily visit the sites and immediately pay for goods and services via their personal Paypal accounts. What could possibly be easier for a business and consumer today?

With a strong multi-channel commerce ability, more and more local businesses, retailers and big brand names will join to specifically target the customers they want and easily offer target promotions to millions of people each day.

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Recap of a recent PayPal blog post:

Brick and mortar stores and those online are definitely overlapping with enterprises like WHERE. A customer gets a lot of choices standing in a retail store accessing information with internet capability and QR codes on their mobile phone, and at the same time the local business wins too.

In order for PayPal customers to use the service for local transactions, it sees the need to make itself available in the WHERE mobile application. Analyst Day’s John Donahue points out that eBay is evolving into a leader in the retail arena by becoming more accommodating in every way possible to the customer. It is so important to focus on local and mobile. Added onto acquiring Milo in 2010, this will enhance the overall worth to all potential customers. Consumers can shop with any method from any location, and at the same time any type of retail outlet, big or small, benefits since we are an asset, not a competitor, with the businesses themselves.

It looks like PayPal has found its way into the local market by making itself available with in-store shopping. However, I foresee somewhat mild achievements unless the actual flow of it works flawlessly. It will be intriguing though to witness the combo of mobile generated payments along with offers and inquiries that accompany this method of doing business.

As a recap, here are actual statistics for WHERE:

Revenue for 2010 = $17 M, and the 2011 projection hits $40 M.

CityGrid, Zvents and AT&T top the list as the main sources for WHERE advertisers. Direct advertiser connections are not common.

If this concept of overlapping local shopping with online transaction completion does achieve its intended target, both the business and the customer will enjoy the benefits of a very streamlined point of sale.

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This minor change reflects Google’s renewed focus on providing better localized content, especially for mobile applications. Google’s Places app, with its integrated search, now poses a challenge for other location and LBS apps. It’s only a matter of time before Google adds a “local deals” feature to the app as well.

Dan Gilmartin of WHERE has stated that their company has set itself on the path of becoming a content-rich recommendations engine in order to differentiate themselves from the crowd of providers that offer “commodity local search” on smartphones and other mobile devices.

This means that as various companies vie for greater usage of their mobile apps, they’re going to have to come up with unique features or content that will set them apart immediately from the others.

This is what Citysearch is attempting to achieve with its very own Deals app while AT&T Interactive is currently dabbling with deals and events while going for what they describe as a “more branded” UI for its apps.

Publishers are continuing to try to add social features to their mobile apps while keeping the mantra of “so-lo-mo” (social, local, mobile) alive and well. Even Google has now begun to aggressively push their HotPot recommendation engine.

All told, the result is a lot more pressure for both publishers and developers who must become innovative with their apps while addressing the problems of the user. One of the most stubborn problems that has yet to be effectively dealt with is to streamline the task of decision-making for the user, as they currently have to sift through dozens of reviews before being able to make a single decision.

Take the age-old question of where to eat when outside the house. It’s a hard enough question to answer on your own, but if you ask a group, everybody ends up pulling out their mobile devices and sorting through the options. The process often ends up fruitless as the group invariably falls back on some good restaurant one of them happens to know in the area. Real world situations like this present a challenge for the way designers and programmers create the next generation of apps.

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