Topix.com as a Hyperlocal Portal

by Matt on Oct 18, 2008 in Industry

Peter Krasilovsky has a fairly brief interview with Topix CEO Chris Tolles about how the site has been remade over the years from a pure news aggregator into a local portal site.

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They talk about the addition of business listings (from InfoUSA) and classifieds, and Tolles shares some interesting stats about the site’s growth. Here’s one quote from Tolles that jumps out at you:

“Nobody has our reach on the net. We have engagement from 20,000 cities and towns every month.”

That’s impressive, but I still find the new MapQuest Local to be a more compelling local portal experience. Ironically, MapQuest is pulling its local news content from … Topix.

But there’s one big difference: MapQuest wants people like you and me, local bloggers, to send them our content.

I don’t see any similar efforts from Topix to get local content from the people that are on the street writing it. That’d be a nice addition.

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October 18, 2008 | Filed Under Industry 

Comments

5 Responses to “Topix.com as a Hyperlocal Portal”

  1. Chris Tolles on October 20th, 2008 5:17 pm

    Matt:

    There are two ways to get your content into Topix — first, you can suggest a source (I have already added you into the queue to be crawled).

    Also, you sign up to be an editor for any page on Topix, and from there, you can select articles which are appropriate there, including writing your own content on the site itself, or annotating other articles as they go onto the news pages.

    Definitely a good point, and we aim to cover it.

    Chris Tolles
    CEO, Topix

  2. Matt on October 20th, 2008 10:44 pm

    Thanks for stopping by, Chris. Not sure if blog comments are the place to ask, but is there a link on a Topix city page where a local blogger could submit a URL?

    And if a local blogger were to become editor of a city page, is there any risk/concern of spam or conflict-of-interest if that blogger kept pumping his own posts into the system?

    I’m glad you have a couple ways to get local blog content. As I said to the MapQuest guys, it really needs to be as simple as possible. No doubt some local bloggers are pretty tech-smart, but many will be homeowners, small biz owners, etc., who are producing GREAT local content (that you’ll want on Topix) but don’t have the time or wherewithal to deal with too much extra effort to push their content to you. You’ll have to come get it from them in many cases. :)

  3. Submit Your Blog to EveryBlock.com on November 6th, 2008 12:38 am

    [...] traded emails with the founder, Adrian Holovaty, and asked him if he considers local portals like Topix.com or MapQuest as the competition: I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re competing directly [...]

  4. Gulf News on November 30th, 2008 6:52 am

    Hi,

    Can anyone tell me there url from where i can submit my content feeds to topix.com

    Thanks,

    Editor
    DailyGulf.Com

  5. Matt on November 30th, 2008 1:45 pm

    You need to find the appropriate city page, and then look in the middle for the section that says

    [cityname] News Editors

    and the link is in there. Good luck!

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