Small World Labs

TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 2008
Posted at 10:22:25 AM
Hyper-Local 2.0 -- New Ventures Stepping Up
Hyper-local Web sites have hardly been a runaway success to date. They have been erratic in attracting any volume of interesting news from users and consistent in generating a disappointing volume of advertising.

But that is not discouraging entrepreneurs who think that the potential is still there and that they will do better with both content and revenue than the first wave did.

One venture of note is the year-old neighborsgo.com sites run by the Dallas Morning News. It is built on top of 18 weekly print zoned editions. Those were already generating plenty of submissions, according to Oscar Martinez, managing editor of the project; by adding a matched online component and adding staff (now totaling 27) to solicit and edit contributions, the reasoning went, more content and more varied content could be expected.

I don't live in a Dallas neighborhood, but to my eye the site delivers better than most what hyper-local was supposed to be. It is not rock-em-sock-em investigative work, but there are opinion pieces and discussion strings of the sort you get from the big boys like Slate and Huffington Post. Especially notable is a volume of well--displayed video (heavy on local American Idol contestant Jason Castro but not exclusively so).

Martinez explained that some of the Web site content is then reverse-published back into the print editions, making them richer in content for those readers not into web watching. That in turn generates more local advertising in the print edition Like many others in the field, the Morning News finds some market for local online ads but most local merchants being more comfortable with print at least for now.

If the site seems designed to coax a certain kinds of contributions, that is no happenstance. The software is the handiwork of Austin-based Small World Labs, a start-up specializing in social networking. CEO Michael Wilson said in a phone interview that the company has only one other newspaper client -- the San Diego Union Tribune -- but has a stable of customers as diverse as Fox Networks and the inspirational magazine, Guideposts. Design and ease of posting are part of the package, he said, but the real point is "to game plan the kind of community you want to build."

A very different approach to hyper-local is taking shape in a new venture, ourtown.com, trying to tackle the field at a macro/national level. George Blake, a former editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer who is running the editorial side of the venture, told me the basic strategy is to stake out all 70,000 zip codes and get working sites up and running in as many as possible. To that end, the company and its parent, Inqbate, hope to license several hundred editor/publishers, charged with mining neighborhood content and selling ads.

Check your local zip code and you will likely find a bare cupboard, except for some national news links and a few national ads. But Blake thinks Back Fence and other failed hyper-local ventures have defined hyper-local areas too broadly -- ultimately there will be a market for user content paired with relevant advertising in communities that number in the low thousands of residents.

In highlighting these efforts (by no means a comprehensive list), I don't mean to tout them as likely successes. But I do think it of note that entrepreneurs from within the newspaper industry and the outside are game to give hyper-local a second try.

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