I spoke to TrustedPlaces‘ founder Sokratis Papafloratos at some length this past week about the site, the UK local market and a range of issues tied to small businesses. The conversation was largely off the record but he’s thinking very creatively about services and tools for SMBs I have to say.
The site recently simplified (somewhat) and executed a redesign:
For a site that is run by four people it has made striking progress. He cited impressive traffic numbers to me.
And with the entry of Yelp into the UK the market is becoming quite competitive. There are five or six services (or so) that now encroach on Yell’s territory (and Thomson’s) in some way: TrustedPlaces, TouchLocal, Yelp and Qype among others (Local.com is also there). If we’re just talking about restaurants and “things to do” there are scores of other sites (e.g., Time Out).
Then there’s Google of course, which has a greater market share in the UK than in the US. It’s a very interesting market with many parallels to the US but significant differences as well, culturally and competitively.
