MapQuest Dropping Local Blog Support
In one of the first articles on Hyperlocal Blogger, I showed and wrote about an opportunity for local bloggers to get exposure through the popular MapQuest web site: MapQuest Wants Your Local Content.
They don’t want it anymore.
Greg Sterling first mentioned in passing that MapQuest Local — the company’s excellent local start page — is going away, and that immediately made me wonder if the local blog content would be, too. I spoke today with MapQuest GM Christian Dwyer and he confirmed that it is … although MapQuest may bring it back in the future.
Background
If you’re not familiar, take a look at local.mapquest.com and you’ll see what this is about. That’s the home page for MapQuest Local, and it should default to your current location. You should see, somewhere near the top, a “Blogs in…” widget like this one from the Seattle page:
You can see that there’s an “Add Your Blog” button, and some real estate agent has wisely taken MapQuest up on that offer. I don’t know how much exposure she’s received, but this was always a pretty brain-dead simple thing to do. Even if it didn’t lead to a ton of new visitors to your hyperlocal blog, it also didn’t require a ton of effort to setup … so any exposure was a fair trade.
Current Situation
MapQuest Local will eventually go away, Dwyer tells me, and the support for accepting local blog content will go with it. He says there’s no timetable for this to happen, though; it depends on how quickly MapQuest users adopt the new MapQuest home page at new.mapquest.com. When there’s substantial adoption there, the “classic” version of MapQuest, along with MapQuest Local, will go away.
For now, MapQuest is bringing in local blog content … but, as an AOL-owned property, it’s focusing on content from AOL’s growing Patch network. Dwyer showed me Maplewood, NJ, restaurant listings in MapQuest’s system that are pulling business information from the Patch hyperlocal site covering Maplewood.
Future Possibilities
But all isn’t lost for local bloggers. Dwyer did say that MapQuest is thinking about how to capture local blog content from non-Patch sources and make it part of the main experience on the new MapQuest.com. A likely addition to come sooner than that will be local news sourced from AOL’s news property.
Bottom line: It may be many months before MapQuest Local goes away, so if you want to submit your blog to the local site covering your area … go for it. Just be aware that it won’t be around forever.
(PS – while you’re on MapQuest, do check out the new site. It’s got some pretty darn cool mapping tools that I’ve not seen on Google Maps or anywhere else.)
Great Hyperlocal Advice…From 3 Years Ago
I just read an article and was so thrilled with how great it was that I never even noticed when it was published: three years ago. Don’t let that stop you from reading. It’s still just as relevant today, perhaps even more so given the growth and interest in the hyperlocal blog/site, community news space.
It was written by Mark Potts, founder of Backfence — a hyperlocal news community site that was probably ahead of its time and shut down before this article was written. He shares some real down-to-earth wisdom for anyone running and thinking about starting a hyperlocal site:
- Engage the community.
- It’s not journalism—it’s a conversation. (Actually, it’s whatever the community wants it to be.)
- Hyperlocal content is really mundane.
- Trust the audience.
- Focus on strong, well-defined communities.
- Leverage social networking.
- There is most certainly a robust hyperlocal advertising business.
- Keep costs down.
- Partner with a media company or some other distribution source.
- Hyperlocal works. You need patience and hard work to embed yourself in a community and become a vital cog in the life of that community. But when a community comes together, it’s striking.
- Hyperlocal is really hard. Don’t kid yourself. You don’t just open the doors and hit critical mass.
The article goes deeper into each of those points above, so go read it; you’ll be glad you did.
Mark Potts, by the way, is currently the CEO of GrowthSpur, a company that offers a variety of tools/services to help hyperlocal sites make money.
Hyperlocal News Roundup
Happy Independence Day to all readers here in the U.S. Hope you’ve had as enjoyable a holiday weekend as I’m having. I just posted a couple fireworks photos on one of our hyperlocal blogs, and coupled it with some griping about people setting off pro-level fireworks in a residential neighborhood. Seriously, it’s sounded like a war zone tonight around these parts.
On a much brighter note, the SEO for Hyperlocal Blogs series will launch on Monday with the first of five articles. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, here are a half-dozen links from the past week. I particularly enjoyed reading the Jeff Jarvis piece below on his Buzz Machine blog.
- Bloggers We Love: Jill Harrison – 10 Ways to Build Community as a Hyperlocal Blogger., Outside.in Blog
- Bloggers We Love: Your Stories Are LIVE on CNN.com!, Outside.in Blog
- Dan Cote with YourLocalBlog.com, hyperlocal101.com
- Journalists’ pride getting in way of user-generated content, says Paul Bradshaw, www.journalism.co.uk
- Three things a new online journalist should know, www.crocstar.com
- Independence day for newspapers, www.buzzmachine.com
New York Times Drops Its Hyperlocal Experiment
Here’s a change of pace: One of the big guys is getting out of the hyperlocal blogging business. The New York Times revealed today that it’s closing the doors of The Local, its pair of hyperlocal sites in New Jersey. The sites are being handed over to Baristanet, possibly the original hyperlocal blog.
The Times was one of the first major media outlets to try hyperlocal blogging/journalism, and when they first announced The Local, there was a fair amount of criticism. Some questioned the decision to try to cover three unique towns with a single blog; others questioned the decision not to launch each blog on its own domain (they were launched under the nytimes.com domain). And I pointed out the oddity of launching The Local on a URL that had the word “marketing” in it.
In its announcement, the Times talks about The Local being an “experiment” and mentions “lessons learned,” but I’m struck by this point they make about the capabilities of citizen journalists/bloggers:
From its launch on March 2, 2009, the heart of The Local has been our contributors, who taught us that communities are filled with talented, civic-minded, interested and interesting people who have much to offer in the way of local coverage. We are spreading that message far and wide, encouraging other journalists and news organizations — and other citizens — to venture down this path.
Quite a contrast to the recent editorial in my small-town newspaper, isn’t it?
I’d suggest you read more about this on Mediagazer, which has reactions from a handful of other sites, too. (thx to Nancy for the tip)
HelloMetro Continues to Grow its Hyperlocal Network
We tend to talk a lot about what AOL is doing with Patch, about big media’s interest in hyperlocal (e.g., CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, The Guardian, Seattle Times, etc., etc.), about small-town papers going hyperlocal … and yet we barely talk about what HelloMetro.com is doing.
What is HelloMetro?
HelloMetro is building a network of hyperlocal web sites that currently covers 1,500 cities, 35,000 neighborhoods, and 50,000 zip codes. There are currently about 1,100 web sites in the network, covering big cities like HelloAtlanta.com and smaller towns like HelloRichland.com in my backyard.
In early 2009, the company started hiring local writers (HelloMetro uses the term “journalist”) to create new content across this network. The company says it currently has more than 2,500 local and exclusive articles, and its network gets more than six million visitors per month. (You can look at both sites above to compare a site with a local writer and one without.)
What are they doing now?
According to a news release last week, HelloMetro is going international — it’s hired writers in Canada, Scotland, Ireland, and Australia. The news release also says that the company now has 40 content writers with a “professional literary background” who write dozens of “new and exclusive” articles every week.
HelloMetro President/Founder Clark Scott emphasizes in the news release that the company isn’t a local content factory.
“We do not employ free blogs, create cheap content treadmill, or try to coax journalists into writing for pennies a paragraph,” Scott said. “Our goal is to ensure that every exclusive article published by HelloMetro provides enriching, valuable, professionally produced information about that city – from a uniquely local perspective.”
The news release says that HelloMetro pays its writers “a substantial per-story rate,” but doesn’t offer any more detail. A little research online, though, leads you to a copy of a HelloMetro job listing in Google’s cache. It says that HelloMetro pays $50 per article. No one’s going to retire on that wage, but it could make for nice spending money for a motivated local writer.
Final Thoughts
The main idea here is to point out that not all of the movement and energy in the hyperlocal news/blogging/content space is coming from the Big Players — something I feel guilty of focusing on. All of us down on the ground tend to perk up our ears when we hear about another big newspaper starting a hyperlocal project, or about CNN investing in the space. This industry that we love has a lot more branches on its tree than we may realize, which means a lot more competition out there for readers, advertisers, and attention.
Hyperlocal News Roundup
This week’s recap has some more stuff on some of the recent Knight News Challenge winners, a job listing from EveryBlock, and more. Enjoy the links!
- Hyperlocal websites are invaluable to Local Authorities, www.lgeoresearch.com
- Knight News Challenge: GoMap Riga won’t make much new, just (hopefully) make things work better, Nieman Journalism Lab
- Q&A: Knight News Challenge winner Retha Hill discusses her local platform CitySeed, www.journalism.co.uk
- Battle for Hyper Local News and Revenue, meltaylormedia.com
- Methinks newspapers protest too much about bloggers, stevebuttry.wordpress.com — Steve Buttry writes about my recent post/kerfluffle with the anti-blog, anti-citizen journalism editorial in my local paper.
- Hyper-Local News Opens Up, newsbreaks.infotoday.com
- Job opening: Community Manager, EveryBlock Blog
- Local Index and Radius Filter Launch in Adwire, fwix.posterous.com
- Poll shows Americans trust Facebook and Twitter more than traditional media, Editors Weblog — This is one is quite interesting in light of last week’s kerfluffle, n’est-ce pas?
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