Starting today, ZocDoc encourages medical professionals who want to be part of our first roll-out wave to apply for ZocDoc. The first doctors on the system will be primary care physicians, family practitioners, and general internists in Manhattan (for coverage in other areas, see "Where Next, ZocDoc?").

If you live in New York, ZocDoc has made finding a dentist easy for a couple of months now. However, if you live somewhere else, then you may be interested to hear that we've given our users the power to select the city ZocDoc will come to next: The New ZocDoc City will be determined in a fair & democratic process. We are currently accepting nominations for candidate cities. If your city isn't listed below, make sure to vote today and rally your friends and co-workers, too. And here are our front-runners today: 1. Washington DC 2. San Francisco 3. Chicago 4. Los Angeles 5. San Jose 6. Seattle 7. Philadelphia 8. Atlanta 9. Boston 10. Detroit

Look out for an article by Rebecca Buckman in today's WSJ. While she is worried that the Web 2.0 may be a bubble, her biggest worry about ZocDoc seems to be that we have only a 2% market penetration (less than three weeks after launch): Among firms presenting there was ZocDoc Inc., which lets people make appointments with doctors and dentists online. The New York company has listings for only 2% of the dentists in Manhattan and no physicians, but it has attracted interested investors, says its CEO, Cyrus Massoumi. Read the full article

It's always good to feel appreciated, but the response to our launch and press release has shown us that we are not alone in our belief that finding doctors and dentists is a major pain point for many fellow Americans.

Today at 10:45 am PST our service went live at TechCrunch40, where ZocDoc was selected as one of the 40 hottest startups globally by Michael Arrington and his team. Not a small compliment, considering they have reviewed thousands of companies in the TechCrunch Blog (one of the top 3 tech blogs worldwide).