Even as Groupon is poised to sell itself to Google for badillions of dollars, the attack of the social buying clones continues.

Today, it is the launch of FamilyFinds, a Santa Monica, Calif., start-up aimed at offering daily deals to families, with $5.75 million in funding to help it get going.

“Think relevance, plus an explosive market plus a great team,” said FamilyFinds CEO Matt Coffin, in an interview yesterday about the new site, whose first “holi-deal” today is “$10 Only-in-LA Santa Photos.”

Others to come include kid-focused live shows, skate rentals and holiday cruises that Coffin said are “hyper-local and demographically targeted.”

Coffin said, as a longtime entrepreneur, he was intrigued with the booming social e-commerce space. But, as a parent, he was less impressed, because of little in the way of personalization.

“I was somewhat disenchanted by the same offers that did not target me accurately,” he said.

(So is BoomTown, who is going to scream if I get another spa treatment or stripper pole lesson offer this week. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Thus, Coffin said FamilyFinds drills down on one audience–those who need to entertain and serve the little ones.

The former founder of LowerMyBills co-founded FamilyFinds with, among others, a blast from the Web 1.0 past: Former Disney Internet Group head Jake Winebaum.

At launch, FamilyFinds said it will focus on numerous communities across Los Angeles, although a national rollout is coming in 2011.

Split Rock Partners provided the Series A funding.

Here’s the official FamilyFinds press release:

FAMILYFINDS.COM ENTERS $1B LOCAL SOCIAL ECOMMERCE SPACE

Backed by $5.75 Million Investment, Leading Internet Veterans
Launch Vertical Family Daily Deal Site

(Santa Monica, CA) December 1, 2010–FamilyFinds, an online daily promotions site exclusively focused on services and experiences for families, officially launched today. This community-suggested and expert-curated destination advances the online daily deal space by combining a family focus with hyper-local geo targeting. The company also announced that it recently closed on a $5.75M Series A funding round backed by Split Rock Partners, strongly positioning them to be involved in of one of the fastest growing industries of all time.

FamilyFinds is led by Internet industry veterans who founded and ran several successful consumer businesses valued at over $1 billion, including the founder of FamilyFun magazine, who also ran the Disney Internet Group, and the founder of LowerMyBills. The team, all of them now parents, have created an online destination that will not only offer member families great deals on new and favorite neighborhood merchants, but will also provide information and resources to help them discover the best family activities in their own and nearby communities.

According to a recent study of moms*, over 70% use the Internet to find deals and discounts (the most popular activity) and 62% go online for entertainment and family activities. FamilyFinds addresses this trend by directly creating a single destination for moms and dads seeking deals and family activity ideas.

“Families, local and national brands, and member-based deals is a great combination for a big vertically focused business, and one that we believe is untapped,” said Matt Coffin, chief executive officer, FamilyFinds.com. “As parents and consumers ourselves, we know the key to unlocking this market is relevance, which means being local, curating deals and fun discoveries that create family memories, and delivering great value-based pricing.”

Through consumer testing and an early beta, FamilyFinds learned that consumer demand, especially for busy families, while value influenced, is also heavily influenced by proximity to the merchant. The company will follow a hyper-local model, offering great finds not just within specific cities around the United States, but within specific neighborhoods. For launch, prior to the nationwide roll-out in 2011, FamilyFinds will serve numerous communities across Los Angeles, including neighborhoods in the Valley, Pasadena, South Bay, City Central, and the Westside.

“We know that moms and families are social and use the Internet not just to find great opportunities for themselves, but also to share and coordinate these opportunities and their experiences with other families, friends and neighbors,: said Brian Barnum, president. “FamilyFinds is building a social layer over everything we do to infuse our core value proposition with insight and access to the larger community of families in our customers’ extended networks.”

FamilyFinds is the collaborative effort of Internet industry veterans and parents, including:

• CEO Matt Coffin, founder of LowerMyBills.com (sold to Experian) and active Internet investor including Demand Media, Buscape (sold), Rubicon Project, Mahalo, Machinima and social eCommerce companies Hautelook, ShoeDazzle and ecoMom.

• Jake Winebaum, who was co-founder of eCompanies, which launched Business.com, Jamdat and Boingo, and founder of FamilyFun magazine and led Disney’s entry to the Internet as Chairman of the Disney Internet Group.

• Doug Hirsch, who was VP of Product at Facebook, GM Yahoo Entertainment and Founder of DailyStrength.org.

• President Brian Barnum who was the President of RHD Interactive (a division of R.H. Donnelly, now Dex One Corp.) and both COO and CFO of Business.com and CFO of Rent.com (sold to eBay).

• Leading content and merchandising is Elizabeth Hurchalla, previous editor of BlackboardEats and co-founding producer of Yahoo! Food.

• Leading editorial is Julie Taylor, previous editor-in-chief at Momlogic.

• Leading sales is Terry McGovern, previous Director of Interactive Sales at Los Angeles Times and sales at AT&T local

Was it only a week ago that we wrote a post about the sale prospects of Business.com and did a video interview with its CEO Jake Winebaum at its Santa Monica, Calif., offices?

As it turned out–and I cannot say I was surprised–the deal was finally struck this past week for the highly targeted search-and-directory site to be sold to R.H. Donnelley (RHD) for $345 million.

“Donnelley has 2,000 sales people on the street and more than 600,000 advertisers and people come to them, so they make a great fit for us,” said Winebaum to me in an interview last night. “And we have a pay-for-performance platform that is hard to build, so we make a great fit for them, too.”

There were many others in the bidding, including the New York Times, IAC and Dow Jones (owner of this site), which were all outbid by the yellow- and white-pages giant.

A sale has long been rumored (a rumor broken in The Wall Street Journal, in fact), but Donnelley–though an obvious bidder in hindsight–was never mentioned among the suitors.

The company makes and distributes paper and online directories under the AT&T, Dex and Embarq names in more than two dozen states.

The final news of the deal was first reported by paidContent here on Wednesday.

Winebaum, a former Disney online exec, will likely get a handsome payout in the buyout, in the cash-plus-performance deal, and will become the president of RHD’s interactive unit.

It will now include a new RHD local search site called DexKnows.com, and its LocalLaunch search-engine marketing service, as well as Business.com’s units.

It is all a sweet result for Winebaum especially since both he and Business.com investor and entrepreneur Sky Dayton were widely mocked–including by me–for paying $7.5 million for the domain name in 1999.

In its first incarnation as a business portal, with lots of content, it almost went belly up, but Winebaum refocused it as a search service for business–and gave it the most dull, but useful, interface you might find out there.

In essence, it links buyers of various business goods and services with merchants and those merchants pay for the links.

Another interesting part of the business is its related Work.com site, which solicits and vets content about various business issues from users (often consultants looking for business) and posts them.

Winebaum said RHD was very interested in using the platform to create things like local neighborhood guides online.

Business.com is very small in comparison to RHD, which had operating income of $442 million last year. Helped by another $10 million round of investment a few years ago, Business.com had about $15 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

But having a strong foothold online is increasingly important to print-dependent outfits like RHD, although Winebaum insisted that the form of distribution did not matter, as long as all bases were covered.

“I want Business.com to be a long-term success,” said Winebaum, who said he planned to stay and build on Business.com’s success. “And the future is about providing leads for merchants and the right information for those seeking help, so whether they come from print or the Internet does not matter–you just have to be where people go to for information.”

I am reposting the video interview with Winebaum below, as it gives good insight into the business of Business.com:

Back in the day, I covered Winebaum closely, first during his stint as the go-to Internet guy at Disney and after he left there to strike out on his own with serial entrepreneur Sky Dayton. It was all very glamorous then.

But some of what they attempted, especially an “incubator” to build Internet start-ups from the ground up called eCompanies, did not work out as the hype swirling around it then promised.

Nonetheless, you only need a few hits to cover up all the misses, and it looks like Winebaum might have one soon, after toiling in relative obscurity since then in the less-exciting business-to-business space.

Business.com, which is essentially a highly targeted search-and-directory site, is being looked at by several companies, including Dow Jones (owner of this site, too), as well as News Corp. (likely for its new business cable channel) and the New York Times Company.

The price? A cool $300 million to $400 million.

That’s a lot, of course, and a sweet price being bandied about, especially since both Winebaum and Dayton were widely mocked–including by me–for paying $7.5 million for the domain name in 1999.

Now that it looks like News Corp. might be buying Dow Jones, it is not clear where the deal to sell will land, but here’s a video of Winebaum talking about the site:

In its first incarnation as a business portal, with lots of content, it almost went belly up, but Winebaum refocused it as a search service for business–and gave it the most dull, but useful, interface you might find out there. In essence, it links buyers of various business goods and services with merchants.

Another interesting part of the business is its related Work.com site, which solicits and vets content about various business issues from users (often consultants looking for business) and posts them.

“I found we were spending 80% of our money on the part of the business that brought in 20% of the revenues,” said Winebaum, speaking of Business.com’s first efforts at heavy original editorial content, which resulted in major losses. “And when it was clear that the search and directory was exactly the opposite, it was obvious what we had to do.”

Since then, helped by another $10 million round of investment a few years ago, the business has been throwing off cash, about $15 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Perhaps not as glamorous as working for the Mouse, but not bad.