MerchantCircle and Reply! Thank You.

We've been overwhelmed by the response to yesterday's announcement and wanted to once again thank all of our friends, family, former colleagues, investors and advisers.



As shared in Ben's blog, we recognize that it's because we've been surrounded by such fantastic support, great people and brilliant minds that MerchantCircle is the platform you see today. The needs of our merchant base have driven the products we've created and we've been proud to serve them in the capacity that we have. And now, we're very much looking forward to delivering an even better customer experience!



The market response to this new combination has been fantastic. Thank you for tweeting, digging, facebooking, and emailing the many news clippings.  Each of your encouraging notes, texts, and phone calls were proudly shared with the rest of our MerchantCircle team. We've loved that you have been celebrating with us.



In case you missed some of the coverage, we're proud to pass it on.



And while you read, know that we're back to doing what we do best.. It's GSD time!



Cheers!

Payam Zamani and Ben Smith 

-Two Bay Area players in the increasingly competitive local online advertising space are hooking up as Reply Inc. announced plans Thursday to acquire MerchantCircle for $60 million. (San Francisco Chronicle.)



-When Wienbar and the rest of the team at Scale Venture Partners combed through a proposal for local ad network Reply to acquire local business directory MerchantCircle, they decided the companies were “more valuable together than apart.” (Wall Street Journal)



-MerchantCircle's Smith expects overall traffic to grow significantly as a result of the pairing... (ClickZ)



-Clearly, MerchantCircle brings Reply an inventory of small businesses. Reply says the combined company projects revenues of over $100 million in 2012. (TechCrunch)



-MerchantCircle itself has shaped up to be a strong, search-driven Internet Yellow Pages player — although it prefers to characterize itself in broader terms, having added a Q&A platform, appointments, leads widgets, etc. (BIA Kelsey)

The MerchantCircle Board in the voting room

-MerchantCircle has long targeted merchants in small locales versus catering towards the consumers, as sites like Yelp and CitySearch do. (Washington Post)