Lisa DeSisto, chief advertising officer/GM of Boston.com, described how the Globe has divided is online product approach between the established Boston.com, one of the earliest successful city guides, and the new BostonGlobe.com, which is focused on premium (read paid) content. Unlimited digital access is $14.95 per month. For $14, you get digital plus the Sunday print edition. This provides some incentive to take the Sunday paper, which still carries a mother lode of ads. The new online edition was launched last fall and now has about 16,000 subscribers.

DeSisto said the decisions 16 years ago to avoid the Globe brand with Boston.com turned out to be a particularly good one, since it enabled it to come to market with two distinct online products.

Jeff Moriarty, VP, digital products, Boston Globe, described how the Globe’s Media Lab serves as an “ecosystem for innovation” for the newspaper. To bolster the spirit of innovation, the newspapers lends out space in the lab to start ups, roughly eight companies are operating there now. “The more smart people in the room, the better,” Moriarty says.

Twitter is key to how the Globe uses social media.

“Twitter has gone through the roof,” Moriarty said. “Our newsroom is truly real time. A story starts as a tweet, goes to a blog post and ends up in print.”

Some of the new social products that the Globe is experimenting with include a new service that Moriarty describes as a Twitter for events. Another service called Pulse does sentiment analysis around all the chatter what is flowing through Twitter or Facebook about everything Boston, included all of its rabidly followed sports teams.

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No one talks much about certain topics after public crashes — even when the opportunity remains clear. Hyperlocal is one of these. TBD.com in Washington, D.C., crashed last February, and there is a lot of speculation that Patch.com has become a cash drain on AOL.com and is not sustainable (although CEO Tim Armstrong asserts that several of the largest Patch sites will be in the black in 2013 and that the site remains a definite “go”).

Meanwhile, the dream lives on, and lots of independent and regional hyperlocal initiatives, in addition to Patch, are still going at it — and should be. Main Street Connect, a Northeast site, has raised $7 million of new funding and added a new CEO. Many newspapers have launched various hyperlocal sections. The Boston Globe’s YourTown, for instance, has 50 town sites.

Local Thunder, ShopCity and American Towns also have hyperlocal products that emphasize hyperlocal commerce as much as hyperlocal journalism (arguably, an equally important part of a community buzz). A new venture is GoLocal24, which launched GoLocalProv in Providence in 2010 and is launching GoLocal Worcester.

As an article in today’s Boston Globe points out, GoLocalProv was founded by Josh Fenton, a former advertising executive who grew up in Providence. His cofounder was Paul Krasinski, a Newton native and executive with Arbitron (and brother of John Krasinski of “The Office”). The website employs 10 reporters, including a well-known local TV personality.

The article notes that the Providence site became profitable after seven months and closed a second round of financing in December from Angel Street Capital and local investors.

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