We built OurCity

Something cool has just come out of India, a new local search product from Yahoo! It's called OurCity, and has some parallels with AskCity, but it is more comprehensive. OurCity is a city guide-like product that brings together a bunch of Yahoo! products like Del.icio.us, a social search engine, Upcoming, a social events calendar, and Flickr. It is also meant to compile geographically relevant news, blogs, and info from Wikipedia. Basically, it's all the the social media you can think of and a bag of chips.

Given its specific geographic relevance, it has the means to be an excellent addition to local advertising that is relevant to consumers.

The big question is are there going to be enough users for the product to actually work? A recent study by Pew Internet and American Life Project revealed that 28 percent of Internet users have tagged or categorized content such as photos, or blog posts. It also found that "on a typical day online," 7 percent of internet users participate in the tagging of content. I guess that's a decent amount, but is it enough for me to spend money on it? I don't know yet, but Yahoo certainly believes that it is. If they are able to get enough users and modify their metrics, OurCity has the potential to change their revenues and possibly cause a shift in the share of the search market.
Don't be surprised when Google tries to come out with a product along these lines soon.