Jon Brod, executive vice president of AOL Ventures, Local & Mapping, gave attendees at Marketplaces 2010 a glimpse into the direction that AOL is moving in its local strategy, specifically with Patch.com, MapQuest, its content management system Seed, its LocalFund…
Local news cooperatives are now in development in San Diego, Chicago, Hawaii and San Francisco. The latter, known as The Bay Area News Project, is building up with a $5 million investment from philanthropist Warren Hellman, who apparently thought it…
I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Pastko, CEO of Coupious a Boulder, Colorado-based mobile coupon platform. Coupious got its start when Pastko and his partner leveraged their experience at Purdue University to launch a Coupious iPhone application in…
Vermont’s Front Porch Forum is a hyperlocal network that has thrived, usage-wise, without relying on much of anything other than its authentic community voice. As recounted in an article in this month’s Yankee magazine by enviro-writer Bill McKibben, the hyperlocal…
Jon Brod, EVP, AOL Ventures Patch.com, AOL's hyperlocal network, will grow from its tally of 30 sites today to "hundreds" by the end of 2010, per an internal memo read by Business Insider (and that we saw on www.netnewscheck.com). The…
DataSphere, a hyperlocal enabler and sales agent for local media companies, says that Northwest TV and radio giant Fisher Communications has now sold more than 1,000 hyperlocal advertisers using Datasphere's neighborhood-specific content and sales system. The system is now in…
Examiner.com, the Philip Anschutz-backed site that calls itself “the insider source for everything local,” says it is likely to pass 30,000 active contributors, or "Examiners," within days, and 85,000 by 2011. The current tally includes 1,234 active contributors in L.A.,…
EBay founder Pierre Omidyar and former eBay VP Randy Ching are setting up a local public affairs and civic news site in Hawaii, where Omidyar lives, according to a post on Omidyar's blog that was picked up by paidContent. Former…
Three years ago, BIA/Kelsey created the Marketplaces research program and conference because we saw that local advertising was quickly "verticalizing." Indeed, money and talent have poured in for the new breed of vertical products that would take their place among…
MSNBC.com’s EveryBlock is moving beyond its roots as a hard-core aggregator of hyperlocal data with its first social feature: “Notify Your Neighbors.” The feature, which has been tested for over a month, is similar to other sites, such as Rottenneighbor.com,…
Mapping has become less about radius of where you are and more about what people define as local, how far people are willing to travel and the importance of certain events or locations in their community. While the advertising paradigm…
Neil Budde of DailyMe and Mike Orren of Pegasus News helped the ILM:09 audience understand what it takes to offer a truly customized news offering that is engaging and relevant. One of the key takeaways both Orren and Budde discussed…
In a wide-ranging interview this afternoon at ILM:09, ILM Program Director and conference chair Matt Booth tried several times to pin the Yelp COO, Geoff Donaker to the mat. But the unflappable and diplomatic Donaker just wasn’t going to go…
The News Hour with Jim Lehrer followed The New York Times' lead today with a segment on “news alternatives” (audio download here). Featured on the program were Joel Kramer of MinnPost, John Brod from Patch.com and Esther Thorson from The…
The New York Times weighs in today on whether hyperlocal sites will fill the local coverage gap left by shrunken or collapsed newspapers -- never mind that newspapers themselves have only recently rediscovered neighborhood-level news themselves. Almost of their attention…
The San Diego News Network seemed like a model for local news development but now its future is less clear. Launched last week after nearly a year of development, the network was built to provide compelling local content to the…
Oodle CEO Craig Donato led off day three of Marketplaces 2009 describing how classified advertising has gone through an evolution over the past five years, progressing from simply importing them online, to making them searchable and finally today integrating classifieds…
Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti, in a keynote at Marketplaces 2009 in Los Angeles, stressed that there are four things local sites need to focus on: being "more local," "mobile," "social" and "balanced." “Local is really an evolution,” he said. “Now…
Tim Armstrong, AOL’s new CEO, is a very big believer in local, with personal investments in a New York-area hyperlocal site (Patch) via his Polar Investments. Moreover, in his previous role as head of sales for Google, he frequently commented…
The New York Times has largely steered clear of local business advertising since its unsuccessful foray into local sales in the late 1990s, when it was working with Zip2. But now it is clearly reviving its local advertiser push. Last…
