A couple of interesting thoughts on hyperlocal community.
First, Susan Mernit:
One thing it’s hard not to mention when we get into this hyperlocal, sustainable business question is the issue of scale. Most of the really good–and viable–hyperlocal sites–are small businesses that serve a focused audience, with decent ad revenues but nothing like the big numbers VCs need for their $5 to $13 MM investments. Sites like Jonathan Weber’s New West Network, George Johnson’s Buffalo Rising, Jarah Euston’s recently sold Fresno Famous and Deb Galant’s Baristanet–as well as Lisa William’s H20town–work because they are small and focused, because they have the same focus and value as hand-crafted cigars–they’re not meant to be big networks creating tons of shareholder value–they’re services for a specific time and place–built by a participant.
We believe the big opportunity in user generated content is aggregation. My blog will only generate $30k per year in revenue. But Techmeme, which occasionally links to my blog, can generate a lot more. Because they aggregate the content of hundreds, maybe thousands of blogs.
So where does this leave newspaper sites? I still believe that there is a place for newspapers to provide a community platform for participation, but newspaper.coms cannot forget their roles as aggregators and deeply involved participation leaders.
Local and aggregation combined: http://www.blognetnews.com
Anybody else here old enough to remember when newspapers had “county correspondents?”
My aunt was one and I remember her spending a couple hours on Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon calling people asking if they had “anything for her column.”
And the newspaper printed things like: The X family paid a Sunday visit to the Y family and enjoyed Y’s apple pie.
Mrs. Z hosted the ABC bridge club and Mrs. Q and Mrs. A were the winners that afternoon. Mrs. B bid a small slam and made it.
ayup. Weeklies 30 years ago were hyperlocal because they sure didn’t have a wire, and usually only could afford to have a few photos made into zincs.
I don’t think this will work today. 1. I can’t imagine a 35-45 year old woman spending three or four hours making the calls. 2. She probably wouldn’t find anybody home. 3. They probably wouldn’t tell her what they had been up to.
Might be fun to try again however :-)