Local Corp. has branched out in several directions in an effort to leverage its local platform. It has recently acquired Krillion (retail and product search) and Rovion (rich media platform and integration). Another major effort is its development of Spreebird, a deals company being built on top of its acquisition of Southern California’s Screamin’ Deals.

Spreebird has been mostly differentiated in the deals space by its profit share with local schools or charities. Users can designate which school or charity they want to designate 10 percent of the deal’s net proceeds for. To date, $650,000 has been donated, or 10 percent of its net profits.

The site, after roughly six months, has now unveiled a new look that gives it a stronger visual ID that is more feminine (more than 80 percent of its users are female). The site has also revealed a new tagline: “Shop Smarter. Make a Difference.”

Senior VP Malcolm Lewis tells us that the site is really focused on providing a better shopping experience, and isn’t limiting itself to typical deals entitles such as restaurant and spa deals. A recent deal, for instance, sold several hundred sets of bath towels and bedding, he noted.

Deals are being highly targeted based on a number of algorithms for location, purchaser history and the popularity of the deals category. The algorithm will recognize buying patterns, he said.

Spreebird is also set to move beyond deals, which is just one of six promotional categories that he envisions (but won’t reveal). The site is also very mobile-centric, with a “significant percentage” looking up deals via daily alert emails and mobile browser, although the percentage actually buying from mobile is much smaller.

In all, Lewis envisions that Spreebird isn’t trying to be a generic deals site. He thinks the site could compete as a strong premium niche, “like Volvo.”

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Aiming to be a Top 5 deals site by the end of next year, Local.com today announced that it has bought Southern California’s Screamin’ Daily Deals to provide the infrastructure for its Spreebird daily deals site. The site has been purchased for $12.5 in stock, cash and relief of debt, with two-year, performance-based earn-outs possibly bringing the founders up to $20 million more.

Local.com hopes to leverage the existing company user base and technology and organizational infrastructure, and scale it through its own 22 million unique visitors around the U.S. SDD is currently operating in 14 markets. The vast majority are in Southern California, but the company has also set up shop in Salt Lake City. In addition to daily deals, the company has recently launched travel deals.

SDD grossed $2.4 million in 2010 and $4.4 million during the first half of 2011. If average deal sizes were $30, that would translate into 80,000 deals and 147,000 deals respectively. One differentiator to the site is its focus on “School Rewards,” which has already brought in $409,142 to 700 local schools and nonprofits. The company donates 10 percent of its share of deals — or roughly 4 percent to 5 percent of the cost of deals — to the program. Local.com says it will continue to build on the program, which complements a charity program it runs that provides 1 percent of profits to local charities — when it is profitable. Last year, it donated $140,000.

SDD’s 60 employees have been based in San Juan Capistrano, California, but will move to Local.com’s Irvine location, which is about 10 miles north. Its three C-level founders will become Spreebird’s VP of sales and marketing, product and operations, respectively. They report to Local.com SVP and Spreebird GM Malcolm Lewis. The deal fits a recent pattern of Local.com buying Southern California companies. It had also recently purchased Octane 360, a SMB optimizer based about 30 miles north of Irvine.

We spoke with Malcolm Lewis and Local.com CEO Heath Clarke about the acquisition. They say SDD gives them “a real business platform with very comprehensive back office automation.” While there had been hopes among some that the company’s $450k acquisition of iTwango at the end of 2010 would serve a similar need, iTwango’s real strength was limited to technology and it has mostly been used for personalization, says Clarke.

One of the real advantages of working with a local destination site like SDD is that it already has formed direct relationships with local merchants. As the daily deal space shakes out, this is going to be a key battleground, says Lewis.

One area that Local.com now hopes to innovate in the deal space is its marriage of merchant inventory with deals via its recent acquisition of Krillion. With 70,000 products from 15,000 retailers, “We can pull heavily discounted inventory from big-box retailers” for deals, says Clarke.

Clarke adds that the company is “already a Top 10 deals player based on revenue. Our aspiration is to be a Top 5 player by the end of next year. And we intend, ultimately, to be No. 1 in community deals.”

Local.com’s Malcolm Lewis is a featured speaker next Monday and Tuesday at BIA/Kelsey’s Deals 3D conference in San Francisco. You may register here.

The post Local.com’s Spreebird Solidifies Deals Strategy; Buys Destination Site appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

One of the bigger questions is how the local portals will fully leverage the emerging social deals platform, with deal a day, coupons, flash sales, et al. Local.com, which reaches 22 million unique visitors via its destination site and network, has been wrestling with the question as well.

Today, the company has announced that it has created a separate social buying business unit. The new unit, which will roll out its first products in mid-2011, is being built on the back of iTwango, a deals service it acquired in late December. The unit will also work with a syndicated offers platform that was unveiled with Local.com’s women-oriented relaunch in November 2010.

Malcolm Lewis, the founder of Premier Guide, an online directory for hundreds of broadcasters and newspapers, has been named to run the unit. Lewis was an executive for Local.com after its purchase of Premier Guide. He then branched off to launch Fablistic, a social recommendations engine.

“Daily Deals are not the end game,” Lewis told us. “That’s too narrow a view of the offer space,” which he notes, also includes coupons, flash sales and other promotions. “We are always looking for ways to connect with customers to add incremental sales.”

Lewis adds that “customers” means both local small businesses and national advertisers seeking to target local consumers. ”Local.com’s core competency is connecting other people’s local advertisers to a huge network of consumers.”

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