The next generation of local search engines is here, and it looks a little bit like Netflix. We recently met up with founder, president and general manager Gadi Shamia (pictured right) and VP of marketing Ryan Kuder (pictured left) to talk about Bizzy, ReachLocal‘s personalized local business recommendation engine that launched this morning in San Francisco.
Shamia said there are three ways to discover a business: find what you already know you want in the yellow pages or Google, let the critics decide for you on Zagat or Yelp, or do it the old-fashioned way and ask around. Shamia feels that all three options are missing one thing: that none of these recommendations are personalized. One person’s one-star dive is another person’s five-star hidden gem, and just because two people are friends, doesn’t mean that they like all the same things.
Kuder told mbStartups that he and Shamia have vastly different taste in restaurants. “He eats rabbit food,” he said. “I’m more steaks and martinis.”
