Press Release
Yahoo! Offers An Insider's View Of The Los Angeles Area
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TwitterYahoo! LA is the second in a series of Yahoo!'s regional community sites, following the successful Yahoo! San Francisco Bay Area. The philosophy behind Yahoo!'s regional sites is to provide a community-oriented forum where Web surfers of all levels can freely access and contribute information about themselves and their region.
"Yahoo! LA is a localized extension of the information and service we already provide for the Los Angeles area on the popular main Yahoo! site," said Jeff Mallett, senior vice president of business operations at Yahoo! "Using input from individuals and groups within the area, Yahoo! LA is published by the people, for the people and truly offers a service specific to the needs of the region."
With a comprehensive directory of 10,000 hand-picked sites, Yahoo! LA covers more than 230 cities across six counties in the Los Angeles area, including extensive information about Orange County and San Diego. As with the popular, main Yahoo! online guide, Yahoo! LA is organized in an index of categories to make searching for information intuitive for users. Yahoo! LA's categories are grouped under twelve key topics important to the Los Angeles area - Business and Stocks, Classifieds, Community, Education, Employment, Entertainment and Arts, Maps and Views, News, People, Real Estate, Showbiz, Sports and Recreation, Transportation, and Travel.
The Showbiz category features a "Web Celeb of the Month" site, showcasing a different celebrity each month. The first Web Celeb to be featured is Laurie Plaksin of The Spot, the Web's most loyally followed soap opera. Future Web Celebs include Andrew Shue, star of the TV show Melrose Place.
Through Yahoo! LA, individuals are able to access news and stock quotes for regional companies, find out scores for local sports teams and post notices on community bulletin boards. A section to post personal ads is also available and is completely confidential for individuals using this service on the site. Yahoo!'s interactive maps and yellow and white pages provide useful tools for finding addresses and directions. Users can simply enter an individual or company's name into the Yahoo! White or Yellow Pages to find an address and then enter the address into Yahoo! Maps to obtain a map that pinpoints the exact location of the place in question, down to the neighborhood and cross streets.
Additionally, Yahoo! LA includes an extensive classifieds section for
employment and automotive listings, provided by local and national companies
such as Rockwell International and South Bay Volvo. Yahoo! also has partnered
with Real Estate Business Services Inc., a subsidiary of the California
Association of REALTORS, to provide Yahoo! LA users with the ability to
search and view more than 40,000 real estate listings from throughout the
greater Los Angeles region.
For an insider's view into Hollywood, Yahoo! has partnered with key entertainment and lifestyle media to include unique entertainment content on the Yahoo! LA site. In addition to the "Web Celeb" feature, Yahoo! LA highlights daily entertainment and music industry news, movie and music reviews and Billboard music charts, all provided by the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard Magazine. In addition, Buzz Magazine is contributing reviews of books, local events, restaurants, and concerts, and the Orange County and Los Angeles Weeklies are providing comprehensive local entertainment and event guides.
Yahoo! LA is launching with more than 40 initial local media, business
and entertainment industry partners and features content contributed by
individuals and businesses as well as news, traffic, weather and additional
information about the area. Local print and broadcast media partners - KNX
news radio, KIIS radio and the Orange County Register - are contributing
regional news and entertainment features for the site, and "Campus
Reports" from local universities such as UCLA, Pepperdine University
and UC Santa Barbara are also included on Yahoo! LA. Leading traffic information
providers, Shadow Traffic and Maxwell Labs, are supplying real-time traffic
reports for the site, and ESPN/Dow Jones Sportsticker is providing local
sports team scores and news. International travel guide publisher, Fodor's,
is contributing lodging and restaurant information. In addition, UPI news
wire is providing state news for the LA site and will begin providing news
for current and future Yahoo! regional properties.
Yahoo! LA provides local and national advertisers with an ideal venue
to reach targeted audiences through cost-effective, online advertising.
Initial advertisers for the site include Pacific Bell WWW, Places to Stay,
Shopping Link, Kingman Films International and Healthsource.
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), offers a globally-branded Internet navigational
guide to information and entertainment on the Web. As the first online guide
to the Web, Yahoo! is one of the most visible and recognizable names associated
with the Internet. Yahoo! provides a context-based directory structure for
Internet resources, as well as integrated Alta Vista Web-wide search capabilities.
The Company is continuing to develop a global family of Yahoo!-branded media
properties in targeted geographic (Yahoo! Japan, UK, Canada, San Francisco
Bay Area), subject matter (Yahoo! Internet Life magazine and website) and
demographic areas (Yahooligans!, a Web guide for kids). Yahoo! is also developing
new services with VISA. Yahoo! can be found on the web at www.yahoo.com.
Yahoo! Inc. headquarters are in Santa Clara, California.
Yahoo! Contacts:
Skye Ketonen
NRG Public Relations
skye@nrgpr.com
(415) 615-7905
Jennifer Hwang
PR Manager
Yahoo! Inc.
jenhwang@yahoo-inc.com
(408) 731-3362