Citysearch bought competitor Sidewalk from Microsoft in 1999 for roughly $240 million. Microsoft later regretted selling the property — and probably really regrets it now. Anyway, Sidewalk has been dormant for a long time. Now as Citysearch and IAC build out their distribution and network further they’re doing something really smart, creating a contest for others to develop the domain:
Citysearch is holding a nationwide contest challenging developers to create a new local guide application for the Sidewalk.com domain. The winner will receive $10,000 and the opportunity to develop and manage a new business venture with possibly funding of up to 1M.
If you are a semi-finalist, you will receive a link to download the developer kit so you can start building your prototype
Once you have a working version, you will be asked to submit a video of yourself demonstrating a semi-working prototype for consideration to the next round. (link to upload site)
Finalists will be notified via email and/or Phone on August 17th if you have made it to final round
This is a genius idea and may result in some really creative and inventive things that would not have been developed internally.
June 25, 2009 at 7:15 pm |
why have an internal product development group when you can get it done cheaper/faster on the outside!
June 25, 2009 at 8:10 pm |
$10k? Why not just offer the $1M (w some small print)? Seems like a great idea w a lame incentive.
June 25, 2009 at 8:21 pm |
Agree that the $10K is probably low for the work involved.
June 25, 2009 at 8:47 pm |
[...] IAC Wants You to Build Sidewalk.com [...]
June 25, 2009 at 9:36 pm |
[...] Greg Sterling thinks this is interesting because it will help CitySearch come up with ideas that it never could do on its own. This is probably true, but I am thinking there’s more to it than that. [...]
June 26, 2009 at 5:49 am |
Offering $10k as the prize for the amount of work involved? Only an idiot would compete… because they could build it themselves and profit themselves, without Sidewalk.com.
I hate it when companies hold contests like these, but I probably hate the participants more.
June 27, 2009 at 1:50 pm |
Hi Greg, thanks for the post. Last year you wrote about Guidespot.com (http://gesterling.wordpress.com/2008/03/19/local-guides-becomes-guidespot/), which I am the Community Manager for… Seems like a potentially interesting competitor in the long run. I will definitely be keeping my eye on them
June 27, 2009 at 1:52 pm |
oops, that link acted strange… let’s try this one: http://gesterling.wordpress.com/2008/03/19/local-guides-becomes-guidespot/
June 27, 2009 at 1:57 pm |
Well we don’t know what will emerge from the URL. That’s the point to some degree of the contest. Glad to hear that guidespot is still going.