Comments on: Does hyper-local make sense online?

By: Teaching English in Taiwan

Teaching English in Taiwan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:34:39 +0000

Interesting post. I have made a twitter post about this. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.

By: Teaching English in Taiwan

Teaching English in Taiwan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:34:39 +0000

Interesting post. I have made a twitter post about this. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.

By: Mathew

Mathew — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 20:51:31 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Karl — I think you’re right.

In many ways, I don’t think actual physical communities matter as much as we think they do — shared interests (which may have to do with physical location or may not) are much more powerful.

By: Karl

Karl — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:41:21 +0000

Howe’s piece points to an important part of the puzzle – that building around communities of interest – while focusing locally – like CincyMOMS – brings real results.

What I’ve found with Philly Future is that it is easier to target smaller communities of interest within a geography, than entire geographical communities.

For example Philly Foods – Philly Sports – Philly Liberal Politics – all are potentially greater centers of community then a generalized Philadelphia community like Philly Future.

The more general your community effort is (to me news and community are synonymous) – the harder it is to gain traction.

Jeff Jarvis once said the web is about niches – he’s right. Hyper local isn’t a successful niche – it’s just a strata to identify communities of interest – niches – within local geographies.