This past Tuesday the granddaddy of social media, MySpace, announced the launch of MySpace Local.   The fact that they would want in on local action is really no surprise the Wall Street Journal in it’s coverage of the Myspace Local launch points out “The local Internet-advertising market has accounted for some of the fastest growth in Internet advertising in recent years, as small businesses take their marketing online.”  But what does it mean for the small business and how can small businesses leverage MySpace Local.

Jeff Berman the president of Sales and Marketing for MySpace said about the launch that “MySpace Local offers American small businesses a free way to reach more than 70 million local MySpace customers and engage in the online conversation.”

The first thing you should know if you’re a small business is that right now MySpace Local is in Beta and it is starting off with restaurants and night life spots, but that is likely to change fairly quickly.    The next thing to know is that MySpace Local is using CitySearches database to pull business in for it’s users to review, so your business needs to be listed with CitySearch before it will show up on MySpace.

Here’s what a local business page on MySpace Local might look like.  People will be able to view such things as videos from the business, a restaurant’s menu, and insider tips.

The can also view a message from the business and  visitors to your MySpcae local business page will be able to download coupons.   In case you haven’t caught on coupons are very popular in the current economy.

When someone reviews your business on MySpace that review is going to show up under their current updates in the Friends Updates of all the pages of their friends

Here’s what the whole thing looks like on a MySpace user’s page.

In conjunction with this MySpace is launching “hubs” for all major U.S. cities and these city hubs will include new local search functionality
Users can browse and search by: (1) Neighborhood, (2) Small Business Categories, (3) Cuisine Type
Hubs include citywide user reviews  as well as celebrity reviews featured on each hub page where celebrities rate and review their favorite hot spots

You can read their full press release at Reuters

And see the full slide show from which the above were taken here.