Amazon.com, which is moving in multiple directions vis-à-vis local, has agreed to buy TeachStreet, the service for matching teachers and students. Amazon’s interest appears to be less in TeachStreet than in the underlying e-commerce platform for SMBs. The platform already is being used by The Washington Post for its Service Alley SMB leads service.

TeachStreet had raised just over $3 million from Madrona Venture Group, Bezos Expeditions, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and others. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has obviously been involved form the beginning of the company.

The connection between Amazon and TeachStreet is partially personal. TeachStreet founder David Schappell previously worked for Bezos from 1998 to 2004. GeekWire reports that the entire TeachStreet team has already joined Amazon Local, which is now in 40 markets. It reports that TeachStreet itself is being shut down.

Schappell also told Geekwire that he’s pumped to be “working on things that millions of people use.” At TeachStreet, he said they had been “pushing the peanut up the hill for a long time.”

In 2008, Schappell told BIA/Kelsey that he eventually expected TeachStreet to evolve into all kinds of expert services. “We’re helping to find local experts near you,” he says. Categories could include a full range of advisory services, such as career counseling, or kitchen remodeling. “You might need someone to guide you through some of the steps. Or you may want some help negotiating to buy a car.”

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Specialized verticals are a major part of the new marketplaces environment. One vertical we like is TeachStreet, a portal that helps consumers find teachers, and then helps sign them up and process payments.

Along the same lines is TakeLessons, a five-year-old teacher site that is exclusively focused on hooking vetted music teachers with students. The San Diego-based company has just announced a $6 million raise with participants including MySpace cofounder Josh Berman and former Facebook exec Tim Kendall. The funding comes on top of $1.7 million in angel funding.

The music lessons space is a $3 billion industry, but highly fragmented and full of part-time teachers who may not have the expertise to do their own marketing. TakeLessons has been designed to control the business processes, including finding customers, selling them, collecting payments and scheduling the services. The company takes an undisclosed cut from every lesson, which average $25 for a typical half-hour piano class.

Certified instructors are available via TakeLessons in 3,000 U.S. cities. Music categories include voice lessons, piano, drum, guitar, singing and saxophone. The company also offers courses in less common instruments, such as harp, mandolin, ukulele, harmonica and Flamenco guitar, as well as DJ lessons, music recording workshops, songwriting, speaking voice and music performance.

The company, which has 54 workers in San Diego and 137 workers nationwide, recently had a major coupon by landing a program with BestBuy to place teachers inside their new Best Buy Musical Instruments stores. Additional partnerships have been formed with the National Association of Music Merchants, which has its instructor’s site powered by TakeLessons, and TeachStreet itself, which takes many listings in its music category from TakeLessons. Additional partnerships are being pursued.

CEO and founder Steven Cox tells us that the company made a mistake in its early days by providing a wide range of classes, and also focusing on lead generation. “We realized that if we didn’t focus on one area, we wouldn’t be good in any of them,” he said. As for lead generation, it didn’t leverage the company’s real strength, which was to develop a marketplace, he says.

I love this concept, and tried out the search engine for my area in north San Diego. I found several “piano” teachers within a few miles; a (rare) “bassoon” teacher was found 53 miles away. “Steel drums,” however, seemed to throw the engine off, as it tried to give me “percussion.” I actually (used to) play steel drums, but of course…. not many people do.

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