Web-Page Maker Aims Its Sights Nationally
No matter how large or small a town, it’s a safe bet that at least one resident computer enthusiast has taken on the task of setting up a community Web site.
In Ventura County, Shaun Halliday is one of those enthusiasts. Halliday, through his City 411 Corp., has spent the past 1 1/2 years creating Web sites for Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Moorpark, Camarillo, Ventura and Oxnard. Each site provides a calendar of events, an employment center, a traffic chart, a directory of businesses in a dozen base categories and a variety of other information about the city.
“It’s basically an unbiased central gathering point,” said Halliday, whose company is headquartered in several units of a Simi Valley condominium complex. “On one side it’s a community business listing so everybody is included. On the other it is a community tool that can be used by any organization or by the community at large to gather any information about the community.”
Though City 411’s eight employees, to this point, have concentrated solely on Ventura County, their sights are set on much greater distances. The company’s game plan is to license the software and support services to clients interested in establishing and operating community Web sites in their cities of choice worldwide.
Next week, Halliday plans to unveil the City 411 services at a meeting of potential clients in Texas, with the goal of establishing community sites in Plano and other towns of comparable size. From there, Halliday said, he hopes to advance to Michigan, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Utah and ultimately across the country.
“City 411 was designed to build a nationwide network of small community Web sites,” Halliday said. “So even those small communities can leverage the power of the Internet.”
The initial campaign, Halliday said, is intended to attract publishers of free community newspapers who would offer the City 411 sites to their advertising clients as an alternative form of promotion.
City 411 is designed to generate income by selling the rights to the software and services for $5,000 to $25,000, depending on the size of the community.
The company’s clients, or affiliate directors, are expected to generate their income from selling banner ad space on the Web pages and establishing additional Web sites for local businesses.
City 411’s software is marketed by M1 Software, a unit of the Microsoft Corp.
