YouTube Meets the Yellow Pages

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- What if you could flip through a virtual phone book looking for, say, a good dentist--but instead of just ads, you saw user-generated videos of the practitioners doing root canals?

That's the idea behind MojoPages.com, the latest entry in the $4.6 billion local search market. That figure is set to hit $13 billion by 2010, according to the Kelsey Group, fueled by the half of all U.S. businesses that still don't have their own websites.

San Diego-based MojoPages offers a wealth of word-of-mouth features not found on rival sites like Yelp.com. Users rate the value, service, promptness, and quality of each listed business. And then there are the YouTube-like video postings, which "provide insight into local businesses like never before," says MojoPages founder Jon Carder, whose own revealing weekly videos on the life of a startup made the site a hit even before launch.

Carder expects to make about $500,000 during the next 12 months, thanks to enhanced listings where companies can post their own videos, flagged as ads. But will mom-and-pop stores really want to jostle for space with unvarnished user documentaries about them?

Finding the answer could be the next plotline in MojoPages's own video story.