Defining Hyperlocal
by Matt on Oct 22, 2009 in Industry
Last week I asked a question in this space: How do you define hyperlocal?, and you didn’t disappoint me in the comments. You shared some great replies and we ended up with a good discussion that touched on these issues, among others:
- Is it hyperlocal if my blog covers an entire suburb, as opposed to a single neighborhood?
- Does hyperlocal depend on geography or topic/content?
- How does community interest help define hyperlocal?
The reason I asked the question originally is this: I don’t think the word “hyperlocal” is being used correctly in a lot of discussion of hyperlocal blogs/sites/projects.
Example #1: ESPN has launched several web sites targeted at specific cities in the US, like ESPNChicago.com, ESPNDallas.com, ESPNBoston.com, and so forth. And a lot of the news coverage talks about ESPN going hyperlocal, like this piece.
Example #2: NBC recently launched 10 iPhone apps with local news and entertainment information. There are apps for San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and other major US cities. Some of the coverage of this talked about NBC going hyperlocal, like this piece.
My Opinion: A web site or mobile app that covers cities as big as Chicago, New York, and Dallas aren’t hyperlocal. They’re local, yes … but they’re not hyperlocal. If ESPN wants to get hyperlocal in Dallas, it needs to cover the local Little League teams, the prep football scene, and so forth. But ESPN’s sites cover professional and major college teams; those are teams with national-level followings. They’re not hyperlocal.
If NBC wants to create hyperlocal iPhone apps, it needs to have news from school board meetings, construction updates, and what’s happening at the community park this weekend. To their credit, the NBC apps do seem to offer restaurant reviews and other things that can certainly become hyperlocal in the right context. But there’s much more that needs to be done to really be able to call it hyperlocal, in my opinion.
I wonder if you agree with me on this point: Are the ESPN and NBC projects hyperlocal, in the truest sense of the word?
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7 Responses to “Defining Hyperlocal”
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I agree, there really needs to be a defined difference between local and hyperlocal. In our home area we have 4 school districts and I felt like for me to be hyperlocal and bring the most useful (and hard to find content) to readers, I needed to give each school district it’s own site.
That way the site can cover everything from pto meetings, to little league games. To even live streaming city council meetings. Testing that one this week.
I have had a lot of people ask why we didn’t cover the whole area with one site. They say it will be harder to build separate brands for separate towns. On the flip side I have had a lot of people tell me that they are pumped to be able to focus on just their community and cover ALL school events.
So, unless these big guys plan on covering pee wee t-ball I just don’t think they are that hyper
Mainstream media always looks for the latest “buzz” word. Several years ago all the news stations started toting their radar as “Doppler this” “Doppler that”
It’s all marketing, hopefully little guys like us can find a way to benefit from it.
BTW – Great blog Matt!
I think there’s some real merit in the distinction between hyperlocal and local. I covered this very topic back in September: http://christopherwink.com/2009/09/29/hyperlocal-news-a-definition/
I totally agree that when the media fails to make a distinction between hyperlocal and local is simply devalues the hyperlocal concept. A website covering Tri-Cities (WA), for that matter, is not hyperlocal in my opinion. A blog covering a neighborhood in Richland (WA) is hyperlocal.
[...] démarche est largement inspirée de celle de Matt McGee il y a quelques semaines dont on retrouve le bilan sur son blog. Une vision anglo-saxonne à laquelle il serait intéressant de répondre me [...]
[...] D’autres sites/blogs se sont essayés à cet exercice. Parmi ceux que j’ai identifié, vous pouvez jeter un oeil (si vous lisez l’anglais) aux définitions offertes par Wikipedia, par le journaliste Christopher Wink ou par le blogueur Matt McGee. [...]