In the summer of 2006, the company’s co-founders got together for the first time to discuss the possibility of launching a startup. We were very excited about the blogosphere and the quantity of local content being created in this new space. We thought there was an interesting business to build at the intersection of local search and local conversations take place in the blogosphere. The first products we released were local business directories and editorial tools that could be integrated within WordPress and MovableType, two leading blogging platforms. We also launched a Facebook application. All of those tools enabled the structuring and aggregating of local conversations around merchant profile pages.

Turns out we were right about conversations, but wrong about where and how the bulk of them would take place. We didn’t foresee the rise of the statusphere. In 2006 and 2007, local “conversations” were happening within blog posts (and associated comments) and consumer reviews on sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp. Fast-forward to 2009 and 2010, the blogosphere still exists but local conversations are now happening on Twitter and Facebook, mostly via status updates. Check-ins are also part of the conversation and are being used in Foursquare, Gowalla and other location-based social networks. Social media is now a mass-market.

When we built our real-time local activity stream and real-time local search technology in 2009, it allowed us to see the enormous quantity of “local” information being publicly shared on Twitter and Facebook. Millions of consumers were already sharing activities and opinions about local businesses using Twitter and/or Facebook. They are also expressing needs such as “I’m hungry”, “My car just broke down” and “Does anyone have a dentist to recommend?”, even in smaller cities. Local businesses would definitely benefit from hearing from consumers and engaging with them but these activities are happening on many sites and can be hard to discover through the noise. In addition, small and medium-sized businesses are extremely busy. Realizing this, we rolled up our sleeves and came up with a new game-changing product. We coined a new term the “Needium” (the “need” medium) as a way of expressing this exploding phenomenon.

Needium was launched in beta in July 2010 and takes a different view of how to leverage the social web, focusing on lead generation for SMBs. In October 2010, the company brought on a new CEO, Peter Diedrich. From that point on, growth and expansion has been steadily increasing as we improve our technology and facilitate scaling. Needium was first made available in Montreal but is now available across North America and Europe.

In December 2010, Praized Media was featured as a finalist at Le Web ’10, the only Canadian startup to do so. In January 2011, Needium was then listed as one of the seven startups to watch in 2011. Since then, Needium has received numerous accolades and reviews. Head over to our Press section to find more.

We think we’ve stumbled upon the future of word-of-mouth marketing and have many exciting ideas about where this is going. Be sure to keep up with us @Needium on Twitter, and get in touch via our Contact page if you have any questions.