InsideUp The Source for Business Services

I am sure that many of you have heard of Yelp.com, “Real People, Real Reviews” for those of you who do not know:

Yelp is…

…the ultimate city guide that taps into the community’s voice and reveals honest and current insights on local businesses and services on everything from martinis to mechanics.

That is a lot of territory to cover and now it looks like there is a new kid on the block that would like to take a piece of  that territory as their own, Insideup.com.

InsideUp is creating an online community where small businesses can search for business services, review vendor ratings, and get feedback on vendor services. So as Yelp is all about the happenings around town InsideUp looks to be all business, all the time or the source for business services at the very least.

Is there a need for this type of community?

From the InsideUp blog it looks like there are 1.68 trillion reasons:

According to a 2007 report published by Visa International, small businesses (businesses with less than 100 employees or less than $25 million in sales) in the U.S. spend $1.68 trillion yearly on business services, or nearly 35% of their total business expenditures.

Another nice little statistic that lends some credence to the need for this type of resource, also from their blog:

According to Access Market International (AMI) Partners, more than 40% of small and medium businesses (or about 2.8 million businesses) are using Web 2.0 applications as part of their normal business practices. Web 2.0 is a term that describes interactive web features such as blogs, wikis, and social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, & Digg.

How does it work?

Read more