Last year The Guardian wrote a piece on how the jury was still out on hyperlocal and almost a year later that remains truer than ever. No more so than for The Guardian itself, which slipped out last week when so many were away that it is to close its own pilot Guardian Local.

However, that might not be quite the end of the story according to a post on Media Briefing and other initiatives at The Guardian. Read More »

News of the failure of high profile hyperlocal site TBD.com, which some said could provide answers to questions about the future of online news, offers lessons for future ventures and raises the question again about how much of a future hyperlocal sites have.

TBD.com, which launched last August, failed for the same reason all start-ups fail: small audiences, big expenses and small revenues. That all led to big losses and redundancies. Read More »

According to a New York Times report, AOL’s hyperlocal business Patch.com is in some quarters struggling for traffic.

Stories are getting as little as 100 page views and 500 views is considered a success. The problem is that such crumbs of traffic are hardly going to pull in much advertising revenue, which has proved the downfall of past failed hyperlocal ventures. Read More »

After a year that saw some serious milestones tip in social media, such as Facebook reaching the 500 million member mark, you might be wondering what’s in store for 2011 trends in this lively medium.

Maz Nadjm

I met up with Maz Nadjm, Ogilvy Group UK’s now Head of Social Media, who formerly headed Sky’s online social media strategy,  to pick his brains about what he thinks is in store for the new year in social media. Read More »

Foursquare seems in a bit of a bother. Just very recently a mobile network provider told me about some of the work they are doing with retailers here in the UK. If you enter a store and you are with said network, you will receive a special offer. They can triangulate the individual within a 5 meter radius and overlay age and gender. There’s no check-in needed and it’s based on simple trigger marketing principles, obviously ensuring different messages for different visits, and targeted not only on acquisition but also retention and loyalty. Now that is powerful stuff – very targeted, very relevant and very timely and completely independent from the need of being a mayor. Just imagine once they overlay this with social data. It’s going to be like mind reading. Read More »

Now that we all agree that social media and mobile will create a customer centric instead of brand centric reality, let’s look ahead for a moment to a future that at first glance might seem contradictory but is ultimately stable and sound. A future in which, to borrow a phrase of Natasha Saxberg, the social web has been transformed to a value web. Read More »

A great analysis of how to run hyperlocal news or community site has been published by Jan Schaffer, the director of the J-Lab at American University in Washington, DC, who whose fund has invested in 46 sites in the last five years.

More than a third of those the fund invested in between, as part of a project called New Voices, have closed and while those that persist do so because those who run and contribute to them do so for little or no reward. Read More »

An interesting one from MinnPost, it is to start publishing its full RSS feed and will look to include advertising or sponsorship as part of that move in an effort to better monetize its content. Read More »

The hyperlocal market in the US is continuing to heat up. USA Today-owner Gannett plans to boost its hyperlocal presence with more than 100 sites that will see it bring together community newspapers, local television stations with its high school sports community website HighSchoolSports.net. Read More »

The Birmingham Mail has launched an ambitious hyperloca project that could set the mould for ventures. It is partnering with a string of local bloggers whose content will be made available online and in print by the Trinity Mirror title.

The Birmingham Mail Communities project will create of 34 hyperlocal sections hosted on the Birmingham Mail website, which will feature content from local blogs.
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