Facebook app gets hyperlocal

Posted on August 21, 2007 by Melissa Worden

I’m enjoying developing my Facebook page and catching up with friends with whom I had lost contact. And I noticed yesterday a little application that my friends have started using: Neighborhoods.

Which got me thinking that this could be a worthy rival to newspaper hyperlocal Web sites that are being developed. If I can use a social networking site that I’m already fond of to connect with my neighbors, why would I log onto a newspaper Web site?

Then I came across a LostRemote posting that confirmed my fears:

Already in Seattle, 1,200 users have selected their neighborhoods, which means they can now meet their neighbors, invite their neighbors to events, upload photos, browse real estate listings and post items on “The Wall” — a bulletin board of sorts. With the social network already established, you can just imagine what else they could add to the application. While media companies struggle with launching financially-viable hyperlocal destinations, Facebook is well on its way to doing it.

Arg.

Newspapers have to hurry, hurry, hurry, and get their community sites going.

The most frustrating part of this is that Bakersfield’s Northwest Voice has been doing publishing a hyperlocal site (and doing it very well) for three years and it was no secret in the industry. Other newspapers have no excuse. They should have taken notice earlier and established community interaction BEFORE this Facebook application could be any sort of threat.

Comments

3 Responses to “Facebook app gets hyperlocal”

Joe Murphy on August 22nd, 2007 2:12 am

While Facebook may have the members, newspapers have the information. There’s only so much info about a neighborhood that Facebook can scrap together — though they’re trying. Newspapers, on the other hand, have to pull together and identify their community, and then start doing better with how they organize their location-based information.
Melissa Worden on August 22nd, 2007 9:27 pm

Joe, I agree newspapers have an advantage in publishing neighborhood info because they’re information gatherers.

But in this case, I’m talking about user-generated sites, which could and probably should have some guides, etc., as a foundation, but they should be heavy on the user-side of development, which is what it appears this application does.
Andre Natta on August 22nd, 2007 10:12 pm

I’ve got to say that the idea of hyperlocal depends on the community itself. Many people have said that social networking sites have not made it easier to make more friends, it makes it easier for those people to stay connected.

People in those communities may be loosely connected and the information shared in important and viable, but a user-generated site like Facebook using that type of application will not completely replace a site, but it can make it easier to collect information.

I’m almost six months into running a hyperlocal site for Birmingham, AL and I’ve found that social networking sites are great sources of information, though many people are still not able to string it all together. Maybe one day it can compete with someone serving that connecting or hub role, but right now it will still depend on the strength of the connections that exist in the application.