Social Network for Neighbors Fatdoor Raises $5.5M, Hires New CEO

Social network for neighbors Fatdoor has raised $5.5M in its first round of institutional funding. The company has also brought aboard ex-Yahoo Jennifer Dulski as its CEO.

The investment group was led by Norwest Venture Partners with the participation of KeyNote Ventures. Dulski comes to Fatdoor after nine years at Yahoo where she served variously as VP/GM of Local Markets and Commerce, VP/GM of Yahoo Autos, and VP of Business Unit Marketing.

Fatdoor aims to connect you with your neighbors by providing a localized social network for your physical community. Although the site will be in private beta until the spring of 2008, a handful of details have been publicly available since at least June. The website will integrate with Microsoft Virtual Earth to display local business and residential listings on an interactive map. Once users claim their listings, they can add profiles and put down their interests. Users can then plan events and form local interest groups with the site.

Fatdoor will also pull in information from other web services such as business reviews from Yelp, events listings, and driving directions. Users will be able to add their own business reviews but they won’t be displayed outside of the network on Yelp’s website. Fatdoor’s homepage will display something akin to the Facebook news feed with information about upcoming events and recently created groups.