Andy's Book

Brad Feld just posted on his recent investment in Judy’s Book, a social network-based local search service.

Judy’s Book is the brain child of Andy Sack and his partner Chris DeVore.  Andy is a guy we backed at Flatiron Partners.  He founded Abuzz which was sold to the NY Times.  As Brad talks about in his post, Andy is a smart and scrappy entrepreneur.  Brad knows because he was an investor in Abuzz as well as another startup Andy did.

Judy’s Book is an interesting play. Most everyone who is doing local search is going about it with a yellow pages model.  While Judy’s Book intends to replace the Yellow Pages too, they are taking a very social networking/user generated content approach.

I like the service and posted a review this morning.

Many of the comments and criticisms that were leveled at Riffs this weekend apply to Judy’s Book as well.  It will be interesting to watch these services develop and see whether user generated content and social networking will be a better solution than search and microformats.

One thing is for sure, reviews, ratings, and tapping the wisdom of the crowds are alive and well on the web this year.