Local business finder RedBeacon wins TechCrunch50

Whether you love TechCrunch or hate it, you must admit that the TechCrunch50 conference does a decent job of generating exposure for startups. I had never heard of this year's winner, RedBeacon, before TechCrunch50, and I have no doubt that the publicity the company gets from the event will be at least as valuable as the $50,000 prize. RedBeacon is a local business finder that TechCrunch describes as comparable to OpenTable, but for booking services instead of making dinner reservations. You can enter the type of service you want, and it will give you a list of recommendations to browse, with reviews, hours and even how each business is rated on Yelp.

Like last year's winner, Yammer (a Twitter for businesses), RedBeacon is best described by comparing it to an existing product. At least this year's finalists, while derivative, seem like they fill important gaps in our online lives. Threadsy aggregates incoming messages from all your social networks. AnyClip attempts to beat YouTube and Hulu at showing you the specific movie scene you're looking for (although I have no idea how they're going to get that past Hollywood lawyers). Although it's not the most glamorous of the bunch, my vote would go to CitySourced, a mobile app for photographing and reporting issues like potholes to your city government. Not only does it feel like the freshest concept out of the final four, it also might do some civic good.

Tags: anyclip, citysourced, prize, redbeacon, startups, techcrunch, techcrunch50, threadsy