Fascinating interview today by Mark Glaser with the leadership of Topix and how this online news aggregator is now focusing on local forums.
When local news aggregator Topix decided to set up online forums last December for every city and small town in America, they figured the forums would be a loss leader. After all, online forums have a bad reputation for unfettered discussion, gossip and slander, leading most news organizations to abandon them altogether online. And people on forums are usually more focused on the discussion than on clicking on ads.
But for Topix, the forums have transformed the site from a simple search engine and news aggregator into a series of online water cooler discussions that riff off the news of the day. And with the popularity of forums, Topix has a more engaged audience that stays on the site longer. Plus, Topix is bringing in even more money by serving up forums to newspaper partner sites and sharing ad revenues with them.
Neighboroo is a new Google map mashup with lots of data on housing, weather, schools, etc. Despite the name, the couple places I checked don’t really go to the neighborhood level… more like town level. Seems like an online version of “Places Rate Almanac”… which could prove useful if well executed.
Sorry to see that Backfence just shut down operations. From the Local Onliner…
BackFence announced June 29 that it shuttering its 13 community sites, which were in the DC area, Illinois and northern California. The ambitious site raised an initial round of $3 million, but never had high penetration in its communities, or sold enough Yellow Pages listings or banner ads to be optimistic about its future…
A visitor to this site pointed us to the Saguaro Seminar’s resource page today, which now lists Front Porch Forum among many other entities…
The following is a partial list of some interesting organizations that are about building social capital or harnessing it.
The Saguaro Seminar came out of Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone and is based at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard…
The project focuses on expanding what we know about our levels of trust and community engagement and on developing strategies and efforts to increase this engagement.
Front Porch Forum is the “Featured Website” in the Summer 2007 issue of the Orton Scenarios E-Journal. Given how influential Orton is in such things… this is wonderful!
Also had a nice short piece in The Islander newspaper this week. Thanks Lorinda.
And this lovely quote came in today from a Vermont State Representative…
“I love Front Porch Forum. It is such a great way to be connected to different social networks and hear the opinions of my neighbors!”
A couple of interesting resources for folks interested in fostering community locally via the internet…
Thanks to Peter K. for the New West tip.
A couple more postings in the blogosphere after Robert Scoble’s video interview about Front Porch Forum…
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