There’s been an attempt by the Washington Post that basically just takes the centralized old-world model and extends it to a county. It’s called LoudounExtra.com, but it has drawn criticism for not being quite local enough.
Another model consists of – duh! – social networks and user generated content to keep locals up on a community’s news:
What happened at the last homeowner’s meeting?
When are they filling that pot-hole on Main Street?
Was that really Julia Roberts at Bob’s Cafe?
Seems to me like the members of the community are in fact the best way to “report” this kind of thing.
Backfence.com took a shot at this user-generated model, but it recently closed up shop.
What happened? Is this a big blow to the user-generated model of “hyperlocal” journalism?
No … I don’t think it is. In fact, I think that the best chance for “hyperlocal” to succeed is thru user generated material (trying to get hyperlocal thru a centralized “top down” model seems next to impossible to me).
So what went wrong at Backfence?
It’s just that we’re too early for the user-generated model to succeed. It’s a classic example of “Futurist Dilemma”. We need more Digital Natives on-line & responsible for the material – it’s in their DNA to contribute – and we need more devices to be ubiquitously connected. We’ll get there someday…culture will catch up. We’re just not there yet.
dave, what was your conclusion on similarities and/or differences between social networks and communities?
i think the answer has to do with breaking down the word “community” into it’s root— “an experience of one-ness”. if there is an experience of oneness facilitated or created by the social network, then yes, it’s a community. but it’s not a community by definition. i liken it to a bar scene. there are a lot of people in the bar. and they can all be mingling. but is there “one-ness”? not necessarily. of course, if they were all wearing orange and rooting for the netherland’s football team, there would be!!
do you think that a special tool i needed for hyper local? so what do those sites add to what local communtities could achieve via a blog or via myspace eg.
i’m not sure what tool is needed arjan. i think two things are needed generally though: (1) a cultural change so that more and more people are familiar with “contributing” to a network (like the internet) as opposed to “taking from” the network, which has pretty much been its model for the first decade. and (2) devices that help drive the TPPA lower b/c if i’m a “citizen journalist” i am going to need to seemlessly input my contribution… otherwise, it will be too cumbersome
there were water networks, highway networks etc. later there came computer networks (ip-address), then came the information network (url’s and hyperlinks with the browser as the entity). A social network is nothing more than a network of people. Online environments help to both broaden and deepen such relations.
so since we are moving from a network of computers to a network of pages (web) and further into tools and people, one might wonder why we need a page or site to share our stuff. most of these sites are easy puish and storage tools. will there be a future for those sites? how are they to be valued… like the phonebook, just a register?
willl we come up with a social standard or protocol. an ip- address for people? is identity the next big thing? maybe a standard like mail or ical. people sharing standardized content via several tools (like mail-clients, agenda,s etc).so.are the winnerd really websites or services?
I think hyperlocal has great potential The potential is largely in the fact that participation in hyperlocal can actually result in physical change. By participating you should be able to engage, influence and understand what directly surrounds you. Also because the town is sort of owned by its inhabitant (more than employees within a company) so votes in hyperlocal really matter. By having a vote you can make yourself heard and create discussion, mutual understanding and connectedness. …Maybe in the end, hyperlocal will be able to build and filter their own communities, resulting in community-defined habitats.
But it all depends on the total participation. Once a certain usage threshold is overcome, the hyperlocal gets a strong voice. Once overcome, all kinds of localized services will stick to hyperlocal. I think Dave has a good point when he said we have to wait for more digital natives. DN’s are more used to making themselves digitally heard, coping with different truth’s and at the same time expressing themselves.
Also, I think it’s vital to engage the community, not by journalism but by conversation. Journalism can be the initial fuel by reporting what is happening, but each member of the community should be able to contribute to get a sense of ownership. Actually I’m saying: let community be whatever it wants it to be.
i associate this discussion with a phenomenon in holland, some years ago. we were in what was called a depression, consumer spending declined considerable. in the same period as this announcement was made marktplaats (dutch ebay) disclosed some of it’s figures of trading. they were trading 2 billion annually, the said. so consumer spending didn’t decline as much as we thought, or perhaps didn’t decline at all. it just switched to a different infrastructure. (as it happens an infrastructure that is not so easily taxable.) and this activity was totally hidden, at least for a while.
this case is not totally comparable to hyperlocal news reporting. perhaps hyperlocal news reporting plays an integral part in the whole process of news reporting in the future. but hyperlocal news reporting might already be happening, but off the radar. it wasn’t the established ‘classifieds’ operators who started ebay after all. perhaps we are looking in the wrong direction.
another interesting thought is that we are looking at the wrong regions (geographically.) here (holland, i mean) everything of interest (the example like the pot-hole) is already taken care of, there is not much to ‘do’ in the neighbourhood. but in developing regions, like argentina and brazil, the neighbourhoods have to fight for their rights. they might have the incentive (power of the mob) to organize and share what is happening to direct ‘development’ of their direct environment. what are the drivers? what would i want to share hyperlocally? why would i want to share digitally if i can talk to my neighbours directly, other than (anonymous) gossip?
Interesting post from Om Malik’s blog. It talks about a private company called NowPublic that is in the citizen journalism game. Remember, last week I talked about the shuttering of BackFence amidst the seemingly high demand for hyperlocal journalism. Well … NowPublic just raised $10.6m in Series A funding; has 100+ “contributors” and struck a deal with the Associated Press to bring citizen journalism into AP’s fold.
It’s all interesting and way too early to predict exactly how it’ll pan out, but NowPublic’s CEO had some interesting comments on the blog about the Holy Grail of “local”.
He says: Local Doesn’t Matter. “I’m not a believer in local anymore,” said Brody. “I used to think that hyperlocal was what mattered to people, but for 35 and under especially, the concept of local is very different. Like Facebook publishing the news feed… it’s changed from hyperlocal to hyperpersonal.” Weather, traffic, and crime are important, but they’re commodities, he said, adding local politics might be the exception, but nobody cares about them anymore.
So what? I hadn’t thought of this but it makes some sense. Is there a user crisis for hyper-local? Maybe not..…