The Hyperlocal Web

Oncom’s back – for now
Glad to see that the Online Communities Ltd network in Richmond-upon-Thames is back in action after a brief shutdown.
(tags: Richmond-upon-Thames, oncom, London, local)

Journalism is evolving and getting closer to home
Is there such a thing as a “hyperlocal journalism movement”, as Rick Siefert argues? I guess there is.
(tags: hyperlocal journalism)

London Voices – [...]

Front Porch Forum
Only just come across this. Fascinating idea. Anyone doing this in the UK? I suppose upmystreet is the nearest postcode-based equivalent.

Investigating Your Town — Let Everyone Look at the Map | NewAssignment.Net
Gregory Korte, the Enquirer’s investigative reporter opened the map to the crowd. “We’re asking you to help us report the story by [...]

Journalism.co.uk reports that Trinity Mirror has launched a series of postal-area-based websites on Teesside.
An interesting first toe in the water, but I’m not convinced that the Typepad blogging platform provides the ideal framework for what they are trying to achieve.

James Robinson’s piece in last Sunday’s Observer is a timely look at how the big players are suddenly embracing hyper-local – both in print and online.

Mike Boland of Search Engine Watch (a shadow of its former self since Danny Sullivan and co moved to Search Engine Land) has a good roundup of some of the recent commentary on all things hyperlocal.

Greg Narain has a thought-provoking post:
It seems to me there’s a slight gap, let’s call it a blackhole, where the return on hyper local publishing has diminishing returns. Seems the distribution of interest has what resembles a Planck Distribution – does anyone remember these from school?
At the global and national levels, we’re interested [...]

I am fascinated by the concept of creating and strengthening real-world communities using the web and associated technologies.
Since 1998 I have been publishing a community website for the part of London where I was born and grew up – SE1.
Almost nine years on from the first Tripod-hosted local website I created, it seems like [...]