City of Seattle promotes neighborhood blogs
This is cool — got the tip via this Tweet from Neighborlogs.
The City of Seattle home page is filled with links to information about the nasty winter weather that’s hit the city over the past several days. And one of the links they include says Neighborhood Blogs. Nice!
(click for larger version)
That’s pretty darn cool if you ask me — great recognition for the power of local blogs to offer great information that traditional media are too big and/or too slow to cover.
Hyperlocal News Roundup
Holidays and family birthdays are keeping me super-busy these days, but here are a couple hyperlocal bits of news worth passing along on this snowy, cold weekend in the Pacific Northwest:
First, Cory Bergman made a prediction a couple weeks ago on Lost Remote:
With thousands of journalists losing their jobs, I have an easy prediction to make: neighborhood blogging will explode.
Cory says that he’s already getting lots of emails from journalist-types asking how to start something like his excellent MyBallard.com, a blog about a Seattle neighborhood.
Second, Adrian Holovaty writes on his personal blog about how EveryBlock.com is shredding the “hyperlocal” name in favor of something new: microlocal:
This gives a much better sense of our focus. It’s unambiguous in its level of detail: the 1400 block of S. Hill Street in Seattle is unequivocally “micro.” Is a neighborhood micro? Yeah, kinda, depending on the size. An entire county, a borough, or city/suburb? No.
Micro implies intense focus, incredibly small scale and rich depth — all of which describe EveryBlock’s general take on things. Best of all, people I’ve talked to seem to understand the term implicitly, as isn’t the case with the much more vague “hyperlocal.”
I think he raises a good point, mainly because when I started this blog, someone completely unfamiliar with the idea of “hyperlocal” wondered if it meant excited blogging. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to change the name and domain. 
Hyperlocal & Blogging’s Future
“What does the future hold for blogging?” is an awfully heavy question to tackle, but that’s what a bunch of bloggers did last week on Problogger. The replies were good and varied, and worthy of more thought and discussion. But only one person touched on anything remotely hyperlocal in his reply, and that was Lee Robertson:
The future of blogging is to help in creating community. To connect with those around us, whether they live across town or across the world. Blogging is about telling stories, whether the stories are for your business, your hobby or your family. Blogging makes it easy to tell those stories and connect with the people that want to hear them. I might be a bit of an idealist that sharing information can help us actually get to know each other and understand each other better. I have to wonder if the future for blogging is perhaps to take a step back from the professional blogging that we are seeing so much of and becoming a little more personal again.
He’s actually hitting on two things there — the local and the personal. Definitely related, and there’s plenty of room for both no matter what type of local blogger you are.
I obviously think the future of blogging will include the hyperlocal element much more than it does today. (I wouldn’t have created this blog if I felt otherwise, right?) As traditional media continues to shrink, we’ll see more and more local blogs taking up the role of community kiosk and becoming valuable, trusted sources of local information.
Your turn: How would you answer the question, “What is the future of blogging?” Comments are open….
Hyperlocal News Roundup
While I’m trying to piece together a post on hyperlocal blogging in big cities vs. smaller towns (have a couple different directions in mind), here are a couple pieces of hyperlocal news to pass along:
At the outside.in blog, Nina recently wrote a very detailed Getting Started with StoryMaps guide, offering all kinds of screenshots to show how to add StoryMaps to your blog. These are widgets that will display your blog archives on a map. Jog your memory by reading my old post: outside.in Launches Blogger Map Widget.
On the EveryBlock blog, Adrian Holovaty recently announced changes to EveryBlock’s interior pages that expand on their “anything that can be a link should be a link” philosophy. That means there are a lot of new pages offering incredibly granular neighborhood information. An example from the blog post is this page showing abandoned cars reported in Washington, DC. This increased filtering means bloggers can find a wide variety of local information in the cities that EveryBlock covers. If you need a refresher on what EveryBlock is and how to get your blog included, here’s my old post: Submit Your Blog to EveryBlock.com.
Your turn: What else is going on in the hyperlocal space that bloggers should know about? Tell us in the comments.
Chris Brogan Pimps Hyperlocal
Last night I posted about Seth Godin pimping hyperlocal, and today it’s Chris Brogan’s turn. Only Chris uses the term “small news” to describe what sounds to me like hyperlocal reporting:
“…YOU, without much training, can report small news. Maybe it’s not meant for your very specific blog, but a side blog, a side project, with a few other reporters. I think realtors are actually figuring this out from a slightly different perspective.
It’s not too tricky. We have the cameraphones. We have the Flips. We have the distribution. This is as simple as putting up a blog, adding media to it, and reporting on small news that matters to you.”
You tell me … is Chris talking about hyperlocal? I think so. Perhaps it’s just one subset of hyperlocal — the hyperlocal news angle. Hyperlocal blogs can be more than just news reporting; they can be random thoughts/opinions on your neighborhood, pretty photos that you take while walking through the park, and much more. It doesn’t have to be news reporting, but that’s certainly part of it.
Seth Pimps Hyperlocal
I missed this a week or so ago (because I’m no longer subscribed to his blog, but might have to re-subscribe), so apologies if it’s old news to you … but Seth Godin pimped hyperlocal (blogs, web sites, content, you name it) in a recent post that outlines 10 ways to make money online.
One of his 10: Connect people who are proximate geographically.
That’s pretty much the hyperlocal manifesto in one sentence, isn’t it? Here’s his entire description of a hyperlocal business model:
We all know that newspapers are tanking. Yet news, it appears, is on the rise. This paradox is an opportunity. Who is connecting the 10,000 people in your little community/suburb/town/zip code to each other? One person who spends all day at school board meetings, breaking stories about a dumping scandal, profiling a local business person or teacher? If you did that, and built an audience of thousands by RSS and email… do you think you’d have any trouble selling out the monthly cocktail party/mixer? Any trouble finding sponsors among local businesses for a media property that actually and truly reaches everyone?
That’s not exactly the model Cari and I are going for on our four hyperlocal blogs — I couldn’t imagine selling ads on the Kennewick Real Estate Blog, or any of the others, for that matter. But it is the right attitude to take into the start of any hyperlocal blog — it’s about connecting people and connecting with people. And I like the idea of starting a hyperlocal mailing list. That’s good stuff.
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