http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11231089 Localist was started by our national postal service and focussed initially on just one city. Lots of giveaways, cute cars zipping around the city. A directory that was trying to be social. They even had a rep visit us to try to upsell us [our listing] onto a paid listing - turned me off when the rep told me they'd partnered with Google but on closer inspection it turned out they were just using Google's custom search. I'm surprised that the management team wanted to sink their own money into it. I wish them luck but I'm not sure a directory really warrants it.
"cute little cars zipping around the city"...sounds like they invested a lot in targeting youngsters but then again, you too remember the cars. They definitely need to do something with the layout. When I first pulled it up, the first thing that jumped into my head is that it looked like one of those domain parking pages that spoofs a site/search engine. It seems a bit like a directory and Pinterest and Facebook all merged into one. Seems like it could work. Looks a bit like the NZ version of Yelp.
They should've partnered with Yelp for NZ instead ( http://www.yelp.co.nz/ ). I am sure Yelp could use a little help over in NZ and it would probably yield positive results for both parties.
The theme looks like Pintest, lol I guess if it was in the red maybe they bought it for scrap prices, Still seems like a pretty big gamble. I would not want to compete in the directory biz with the big players, seems like if you fall off of 1st page google you would die pretty quick.
It sounds like the mistake they made was getting people's attention but not being able to make the most of it. The cute cars provided name recognition but how many folks visited or used the site because of them? After all, how many folks are surfing the web whilst driving?