“Our vision is to become the first place people turn whenever they need to figure out what to buy for their business, much like Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is for books and Yelp is for restaurants,” said BestVendor CEO Jeff Giesea, who previously founded B2B media and lead-generation business FierceMarkets, which he sold in 2008.

BestVendor aims to connect small businesses and vendors by crowdsourcing product reviews and recommendations. In a give-to-get model similar to the one used by salary information site Glassdoor.com, the site’s users are required to rate a few of the products they use in their businesses, and receive free access to the other reviews on the site in exchange. The site ranks product categories like collaboration software, web hosting providers and payroll companies based on the reviews. Users can filter the reviews by industry and company size and can ask for recommendations from people in their social network–LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) to start with; the site will add Facebook and Twitter later.

BestVendor is currently in alpha launch and users can sign up for a beta invitation. The site’s business model is ultimately to drive revenue from “enhanced vendor listings, various pay-for-performance options and transactional reviews.”

Other members of the team include head of product Ben Zhuk, who previously worked in product management at Amazon, and head of engineering Magnus von Koeller.

Fierce is the publisher of vertical newsletters such as FierceWireless (its first newsletter), FierceIPTV, and FierceHealthcare for a total of about 20 newsletters. The Washington DC-based company was founded in 2000 and has expanded into events and 19 online news sites as well, beyond the e-mail newsletters…we understand the company had some angel money invested in it. Founrder and president Jeff Gisea will continue to run FierceMarkets as a subsidiary of Questex.

Questex was formed in 2005 from five former divisions of B2B company Advanstar, and is backed by Boston-based PE firm Audax Group. Release.

Updated: Folio has some details on the company’s revenues: FierceMarkets, which officially went on the block this past summer, did more than $5.2 million in revenue in 2007 and is profitable, and boasts 45 percent compound annual growth over the last five years, the story says, without citing its source.