Kelsey-hyperlocal
What's going on with hyperlocal?
From geo-targeted branding ads, to user-generated revenues, comments and classifieds, hyper-local is seen as the Holy Grail for local targeting. But can enough users be delivered to make it worthwhile? and are there enough advertisers to fill the pieline? The experts from the hyper-local school of hard knocks will share their learnings, and will discuss why they remain especially bullish on hyper-local for the future.
Panelists
- Chris DeVore, COO, Judy's Book
- Mary Lou Fulton, VP, audience development, The Bakersfield Californian
- John Geraci, co-creator, Outside In
- Ryan massie, senior product manager, Ask.com
- Ian White, CEO, urban mapping
Note: http://wwww.Outside.in just closed $900,000 in venture funding in late February.
Introduction by Peter Krasilovsky
Newspaper penetration is 30% or 40% of households. Most hyperlocal sites are at 5%. What is the answer to that dilemma?
Geraci: OutsideIn works by helping one person find everything going on around the Internet that's related to a community they are intersted in. So just having one user is a success. YOu don't need thousands.
Examples: http://outside.in/Hartford_CT http://outside.in/Boston
NOTES:
Fulton: Local has to be more than about geography. Communites are more complicated than that. "I don't think we should define our futures around the categories that we see in the yellow pages," she says. Rather look at what people are doing and focusing on -- there are your categories. Demographic and psychographic targetting are important. In Bakersfield, the manage nine different brands (eight plus the daily newspaper), so content which is cool on one site is anathema on another.
DeVore: They have found that members use connect-to-people features to connect to like-minded people in other cities, independent of geography. Hyperlocal is not just local, it is also hyper-interest. Also, in shopping, they will search for the best price, locally or available online. They have had to reinvent themselves based on what they have learned.
Geraci: Their main goal is when someone comes to the websearch and types something in, are they giving the right answer? "We're not looking for people to come to our site and create content," says Geraci. "We're saying, 'what's out there, we'll go pull it together for you and then send it back out to you.' "
Fulton: The built a social-media engine that powers most of their sites. It includes comments, ratings, reviews.
Massie: Regarding human editing. The top query on ask.com was: "Things to do."
Devore: The benefit of reputation systems is that when the content is light, it is important for a user to get comfortable that this is a reliable interview.
Geraci: "We are not looking to recreate the San Francisco Chronicle." He gives the example of a Brooklyn mugging which the victim went inside and blogged about; it spread among all the Brooklyn blogs initing a discussion that went for weeks about whether Brooklyn is unsafe, what about white flight, etc. The mainstream media missed the story. Outside.in aims to be aggregate that kind of discussion -- above blogs but below MSM. "That's what we aim to be is that middle layer."
