Hundreds of millions of dollars have now been invested in interactive local media services. Venture capitalists are hot on the trail of new opportunities. At ILM East, BIA/Kelsey CEO Tom Buono and Scott Maxwell, Founder and Senior Managing Director OpenView Venture Partners [@scottnews] discussed the key opportunities and trends they see not only in interactive local media, but in interactive local commerce and mobile services as well.

Generally, Maxwell is rather sanguine about the market signals for IPOs and PEG deals. This could bode well for Facebook’s forthcoming IPO.

For his own fund, Maxwell’s team looks for companies that meet specific criteria such as they have existing  products, customers and distribution channels. Candidate companies must also have had $4M revenues last year, with expectations of hitting $8M this year and looking for $5M to $15M in venture funding.

Maxwell sees opportunities in the mobile space, especially for entrepreneurs that assist SMBs in optimizing their web site for mobile and tablet devices.