"Hyperlocal" News Sites Take A Hit

By Doug Caverly - Fri, 07/06/2007 - 15:38

A lot of big companies - from Google to CNN - are interested in “going local,” and, to be honest, it seems that those companies have the money to do whatever they want. But “going local” isn’t easy; Backfence.com, which focused on a number of smaller communities, is going out of business.

The Guardian Unlimited’s Jemima Kiss describes Backfence as a “network of citizen journalism sites in the US,” and notes that it was “touted as one of the big web hopes for the development of participatory media.” Backfence’s passing has elicited comments from such sources as BusinessWeek, American Journalism Review, and VC Ratings.

But despite its apparent popularity, Backfence is indeed dead. Paul Farhi writes, “The failure of Backfence may offer no greater lesson than the old one about pioneers being the ones with arrows in their backs. New ventures fail all the time. But it could also sound a cautionary note about the present - and immediate future - of hyperlocal news sites.”

Should Google, CNN, and the rest be worried, then? Farhi goes on to pinpoint Backfence’s problems as “getting the word out and getting the money in” - problems that bigger companies aren’t likely to encounter - so I’m going to say “no.” But Farhi responds to a similar question (“Is there a real business in this kind of business?”) with an answer that Google and CNN won’t like; companies without piles of money will hate his discovery that hyperlocal news isn’t yet profitable.

I dunno. Some pioneers were able to pave the way for others, but there’s no doubt that some pioneers just died. It remains to be seen into which of those groups Backfence will fall.

News Tags: Google, News, Backfence, journalism, Ratings, Hyperlocal News, CNN, guardian, BusinessWeek

About the author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

1 Comment

By Hal Rucker (WPN reader) - Sun, 07/08/2007 - 14:38

Deep & Narrow vs Wide & Shallow

Which makes more sense for local: get deep and uniquely useful content in a small geography, then replicate that process for hundreds of towns, or launch the whole US with shallow content all at once? (Choose one, because you can’t launch with deep local content everywhere at the same time.) InsiderPages went wide and shallow and it didn’t work out. Backfence tried to go deep but in several towns at the same time and it, too, couldn’t get enough traction. Smalltown is going very deep in a very small geography, with plans to replicate that success quickly when we have all the technology and marketing knobs dialed in.

Smalltown is doing very well. Our informal blog documents our progress ( http://blog.smalltown.com ). In the area we serve, we get tens of thousands of monthly visitors, almost 3 percent of the population are registered users, and our sales numbers are accelerating.

It’s certainly too early to say Smalltown has “cracked the code” on local advertising, but here is one way to judge our progress:

1. Go to www.smalltown.com/sanmateo and do a search for “hot dogs”. You get lots of great results that include a local pizza place that has hot dogs on its menu. There are videos, coupons and reviews. This is deep local content and we launched less than a year ago.

2. Now go to www.yellowpages.com and do a search for “hot dogs” in San Mateo, CA. After navigating to the category “hamburgers and hot dogs” you get 3 results. Two of them are sandwich shops outside San Mateo. One of them is a hamburger diner with one badly written review. This is an example of broad but shallow content.

3. Now go to www.citysearch.com and do the same search. Under the sponsored link for Pizza Hut, the top result is for a bakery outside of San Mateo. Under that is a listing for a golf course outside San Mateo. The third result is for a sushi restaurant, but at least it is in San Mateo. This is another example of broad but shallow.

4. Finally, go to www.yelp.com. I think Yelp is great and I don’t really consider them a Smalltown competitor, but I was surprised by the results. Their search results for “hot dogs” in San Mateo are: (1) a sponsored link for dog daycare (2) a link to a dog park (3) a link to an event called the Maker Faire that I assume had hot dogs and (4) a listing for Ben Franks, which is a hot dog restaurant, but it’s not in San Mateo.

IMHO: The best place for hot dogs in San Mateo, CA is Jack’s Grill next to the movie theater across the street from the Smalltown office. (Try the apple chicken sausage.) But you wouldn’t know that from any of the “broad and shallow” sites.