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Smalltown® Launches Webcards.com to Simplify Online Advertising and Marketing for Small Businesses

Webcard™ Universal Business Listings Are Portable Websites That Are Easy to Publish Anywhere on the Internet

San Mateo, CA — May 13, 2008 — Smalltown, the company redefining online local advertising through technical innovations, today unveiled Webcards.com, where local merchants can go to create Webcard™ listings to promote their businesses across the Internet without having to produce multiple campaigns in different formats on a variety of platforms. Webcard listings, which are a hybrid of yellow page ads and multimedia websites, can work on their own or be embedded into other Web pages. When merchants make changes to their Webcard listing, the changes are instantly reflected everywhere on the Internet the Webcard listing appears.

"Merchants typically do not have the time, money or resources to build the features required to get value out of traditional websites," said Hal Rucker, founder and CEO of Smalltown. "So we created a totally new type of portable Web presence tailored to their unique needs. We’re building a critical piece of the online advertising ecosystem that will enable a small business owner to make a single Webcard listing and use it everywhere, whether it’s as a stand-alone website, a banner ad, a mobile ad, an interactive gadget ad, or a multimedia addition to a Facebook page or yellow pages directory. After working with hundreds of our customers in six pilot towns to optimize the features that work best for them, we’re excited to offer Webcard listings to small business owners everywhere."

"After more than a decade of the Internet it's surprising that developing an effective online presence is still such a challenge for small businesses," said Greg Sterling, principal, Sterling Market Intelligence and Program Director of Local Mobile Search. "The launch of Webcards.com, combined with their syndication to local sites and the broader Internet, offers an appealing solution to that problem."

Easy to Create Once, Publish Anywhere, Change Often

Webcards.com includes a step-by-step publishing tool called the Webcard™ Factory. In as few as ten minutes, merchants can create a customized, affordable Webcard listing with video, photo galleries, coupons, formatted text and reporting. Future functionality will include call tracking, appointment calendars and outbound audio messages.

Each Webcard listing has a unique Web address, and they are indexed by Google, Yahoo! and other popular search engines. Once created, it only takes seconds to make modifications and promote new content such as daily specials, upcoming events, coupons and sales.

"We had a website before we got our Webcard," said Wendy Narlock of The Spa Studio. "The great thing about our Webcard is that we can so easily change our coupon and try out different ideas for promotions. Plus, our Webcard has paid for its one-year subscription price within the first two months."

In connection with the Webcards.com launch, Smalltown is announcing integration with three companies that will showcase Webcard universal business listings: YellowPagesLive, Trulia and WebVisible. The company anticipates additional key partnership announcements in the months ahead.

"The whole point of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and online advertising is to lead potential customers to a compelling destination so they will take actions with the business," said Carey Ransom, VP of Sales and Marketing at WebVisible. "About half of small businesses don’t have websites, and those that do have difficulty changing them. Smalltown’s Webcard listings are an innovation the market has needed for a long time because they are such a great source of current and local merchant generated content. Webcards are a compelling destination to drive online and search engine advertising campaigns."

About Smalltown

Co-founders Hal Rucker and Mark Jenkins had a vision for how they could make it easier to find the things people need in their own neighborhood using the Internet, at the same time simplifying Internet marketing for local merchants and service providers. They set off to build an online advertising platform with national reach for the "local" marketplace. Launched in 2005 and funded by Formative Ventures (www.formative.com), Smalltown is privately held and headquartered in San Mateo, California. The company operates six Smalltown® hyperlocal websites in the San Francisco Bay Area and is scaling nationally with Webcards.com, building an integrated one-stop online advertising and marketing solution for small businesses. Visit www.webcards.com to make a Webcard listing. For more information visit Smalltown at www.smalltown.com. The Smalltown logo, the Webcards logo and other sample images are available at www.smalltown.com/logos.html.

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Notes to Editors: Smalltown is a registered trademark of Smalltown Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.