BackFence's 'bottom-up' approach

Greg Sterling of The Kelsey Group spoke last week with the founder of BackFence, a hyperlocal site mentioned on CyberJournalist.net here and here. He got a little more insight into this very ambitious citizen journalism project.

He says "they're not a directory site, a classifieds site, a local newspaper or a community calendar. They're combining elements of all these things.

"Rather than relying on technology and massive infrastructure, they're going to take a 'bottom up' approach and let local 'influencers' (and others) in the local communities (not major metro areas) generate content.

"Their hope is that they'll have the breadth of content (news, announcements/calendar, business listings) to drive regular and repeat usage, which is challenging currently for directory sites. That's partly why SuperPages put eBay, Shopping.com and Web search on its site, to boost utility and frequency of use.

"Their hyper-super-hyper local orientation, they believe, will differentiate them from the local search offerings of search engines, IYPs and newspaper sites."

CyberJournalist.net is watching eagerly to see how this develops.

Mar 01, 2005 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(0)

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