Fred Wilson talks about one of the biggest buzzwords in online media: hyperlocal content. It now has a new name, placeblogging, but it still remains one of the most talked about way that newspapers and media players online can differentiate themselves and capture a market.
Fred muses on why aggregators of blogs by location will hit it big:
“…the best part is these aggregators are going to drive traffic to the placebloggers who are already churning out high quality content and they are going to incent others to start placeblogging.”
On its potential:
“The issue never was the platform. That exists with blogger, typepad, wordpress, flickr, youtube, etc, etc. The issue was content, navigation, and discovery. And that is all coming together.”
Recently, another company focusing on hyperlocal content named Backfence, ran into some internal issues, resulting in several people leaving the company, and others being laid off.
Amy Gahran of Poynter Online posits:
“In my experience, community-based online media thrives when there’s strong participation and collaboration. It’s not enough just to read the news there, or even to publish your own stories there. And Backfence never really got the participation/engagement part down, as far as I could tell.”