Outside.in knows a little bit about building a business in local content. The company just closed a $7 million round of funding to help grow its hyperlocal news, information and advertising services. When PaidContent.org asked CEO Mark Josephson where on the hyperlocal blackjack table he would place his bet, he played the Neighborlogs card:

If you weren’t part of Outside.in, in which local players would you invest your money?

I really like some of the more scalable platform plays in local that are trying to solve big problems, and if they work, they should scale to multiple markets or sectors. I watch content-platform companies like Neighborlogs and Patch that are making progress figuring out the individual content creator model; scalable advertiser acquisition engines like Clickable, Yodle, CitySquares and AdReady that are making it easier for advertisers to have success and social-media companies like Foursquare that are so darn addicting and are creating tons of interesting real-time local data.

Wow. That makes our holidays! We are having a great time 'figuring out the individual content creator model' and its awesome to have our work validated by others in the biz -- especially successful ones!

Here's how we're doing it:

• We're building a free community news platform that provides an all-in-one package of services for content entrepreneurs and community news gatherers.
• Our self-serve advertising tools are state-of-the-art but designed for the smallest business to be able to get their message online in an effective way on truly local content.
• We're powering more than 30 local news sites across the country and our new http://instiads.com private beta puts our advertising services on any site, regardless of platform or toolset. And it's free!
• We continue to innovate with mobile news gathering tools, social community features, built-in revenue sharing management and scaled solutions that will bring Big Media level technology to players large and small -- how about a custom iPhone app solution that a neighborhood news site can afford?

Want to invest in us? Get involved and move your site to Neighborlogs or start up a new community news site. Sign up for our beta here.