Congratulations to Seven Days‘ Cathy Resmer for the national award she just won for her work online. Details here.
A local attorney posted the following on his Old North End neighborhood forum today. Thanks Dennis!
Thanks to Front Porch Forum for this service and all the work that you do to keep the magnificent line of communications up and running so efficiently. It is amazing and the benefits for all are very real. Sometimes it is easy to take such things for granted so I feel it necessary to toss in this heartfelt thanks and appreciation which I am sure is shared by everyone who has benefited from this valuable community asset. Thank you again. -Dennis McMahon
Dan Gillmor wrote recently…
Jason Calacanis, who calls his new venture Mahalo “human-powered search,” says the company will pay freelance searchers a fee for links the site accepts. He says he hopes for hundreds or thousands of people in this part-time capacity.
Some similarity to Front Porch Forum in that our subscribers put all sorts of search questions to their neighbors through our service… looking for a roofer, seeking replacement storm windows, babysitter needed, who to talk to about potholes, etc.
Instead of pay, the motivation for members to respond to requests for information is based on their desire to connect with neighbors and build community within their neighborhood. That is, answer a question and get a little healthier community to live in in return.
More valuable information via The Local Onliner…
My former colleagues at Borrell Associates have carved out a unique role in the local online advertising space with their annual survey of local media revenues. This year is the survey’s fifth, and was conducted with 2,885 properties in the U.S and Canada.
What Borrell found was cumulative local online revenues of $7.5 billion, with 31.6 percent growth (compared to 20.7 percent for national online advertising). Within the local ecosystem, newspapers account for 35.9 percent– which is impressive, but down, percentage wise, by several points. Pure play Internet companies have 33.2 percent, and Yellow Pages have 11.7 percent. Other local revenues come from “Other Print,” including Shoppers and other local magazines, which have 9.2 percent; TV stations, which have 7.7 percent; and radio stations, which have 2.2 percent.
Dedicated, online-only sales people were up 26 percent in 2006, and Borrell sees budgets for an additional 35 percent in 2007. “Some of the largest local sites are now employing two dozen or more online-only salespeople as they migrate from the up-sell model and begin to fully embrace Web-only sales,” says Borrell. “The median gross revenue per online-only salesperson was $278,570; the largest sites were seeing triple that rate.”
The Local Onliner reported recently…
WashingtonPost.com has soft-launched “Local Explorer, ” which allows users to map crime, home sales and school information by zip code. It is a great model for “mapped journalism.”
WashingtonPost.com, in fact, has really ramped up its hyperlocal activities. In addition to the Local Explorer, it has Express, its Oodle-powered crawl of local classifieds; its new City Guide; and its “On Being” video series of local people. The Post is also beefing up its exurban coverage –soon — by launching Loudonextra.com, per Paul Farhi in The American Journalism Review. The Post seems to have been caught shorthanded by Loudon’s extremely fast growth, and has a news staff of just four people for its twice weekly Loudon supplement… Just last year, BackFence signed to power the website for The Loudon Independent, a new startup paper in the County. Per Farhi, Loudon now has 11 weekly newspapers.
Farhi’s AJR article… is a general overview of hyperlocal… It notes, for instance, that BaristaNet.com, the compelling hyperlocal site serving Essex County, NJ, is on target to make about $100,000 this year, up from $60,000 in 2006.
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more