The Tragic Story Of Hyperlocal Communities

Communities like Hampton People, East Dulwich, W14, and Harringay Online are fantastic, but they're generally the exception. 

Most hyperlocal community efforts are struggling. 

They should succeed. They fit the formula. There is a clearly identifiable and reachable target audience. There are a range of issues to get people engaged. There are existing connections between members. There are benefits from interacting with each other. A good community builder should be able to succeed here.

Yet still most fail.

They fail because they either focus too much on the technology, or too much upon news-style content. Technology helps, but rarely hinders. Hampton People, W14, and Harringay Online use Ning, East Dulwich uses a forum. Neither spend more than three figures a year.

And if content was going to succeed, local newspapers wouldn't be struggling. All the communities listed above prioritise interactions over content. 

A few failed hyperlocal efforts simply give up before they succeeded. If the examples of Hampton People and East Dulwich are anything to go by, in the first few months you will only be getting a handful of members. Maybe 10, perhaps 20. This is part of the process.

If we want to build hyperlocal communities, we have to change the way we think about them. This isn't a technology problem to solve (Facebook-style). Enabling everyone to start a hyperlocal community wont make it happen. This isn't a content problem to solve (local news style). Pulling in RSS feeds and encouraging user generated content wont solve the problem.

What we need is a genuine community building approach. You identify your first members, initiate discussions, invite members to participate in those discussions, write content about what's happening in the community, and repeat as you grow. 

Comments

[Willperrin]

richard your core bit about community building is right but you risk over generalising to a 'tragic' story.

you have several things in the mix above that all have different issues:

american hyperlocal websites (your link to patch) with often a top-down approach to building a network communities

commercial sites (your patch link too) which haven't fared too well so far in the UK

who 'we' is - if you are a citizen in your community and want to start a site to serve a local need then it's often done - people use the community building technique you describe

if 'we' is say a public authority or local booster company then it's much harder but can be done if you give people their own voice rather than put them through your filter

have a good click around in the openly local map of uk hyperlocal sites http://openlylocal.com/hyperlocal_sites the sites you reference are good but there are a lot more out there

[Mrdamian76]

Richard,

Have you come across the recent report from NESTA on hyperlocal in the UK, “Here and Now”?

The report - http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/Here_and_Now_v17.pdf - cites you in its main body and your site in the list of recommended resources. (Confession, I authored the report.)

Some quotes to reinforce your post and to point your readers to some further ideas and examples:

“Most successful hyperlocal sites don’t simply broadcast information, they engage in twoway dialogue with their readers. This means good community management is crucial for building a thriving hyperlocal service. (Page 19)

“Increasingly, choosing the technology is the easy part. Choosing the right platform is perhaps less important than getting the right content for your audience, and getting bogged down in which platform to choose can frequently distract you from some of the
more important human considerations which are needed to make your hyperlocal outlet a success.@ (Page 21 in a section looking at platforms.)

Hopefully some of your readers will have a look at “Here and Now” and learn from it, at 15,000 words there's plenty of meat in there (even if I do say so myself)!

[Michael Wood-Lewis]

Richard - Here's another data point... FrontPorchForum.com in Burlington, Vermont, USA, has 10,000 members out of the 16,000 households in the city. And half of them posted in 2011. Instead of dividing our online community by topic, we do so by geography, breaking up this small city into dozens of small online neighborhood spaces.

We've been growing across our state... we now cover 40% of Vermont.

We're big fans of your teachings. So much of what you write jibes with our experience hosting 100+ online neighborhood conversations.

Keep up the great work!

[TowcesterNews]

Actually I think hyperlocal is thriving. I have been running http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/nn12 for five years now.

I am news led, the community engage with the site either directly, via email or social networking particularly Twitter.

What is also interesting is that AboutMyArea is a franchise - and as such has a capital cost and monthly management charges but we are not on our own, and the site clearly works well.

We compete for news and provide a good local service.

If any hyperlocal publishers want to know more just get in touch.

James Rudd

[Kevin Chuck]

Interesting post and well done Richard for telling it like it is. Despite the noise about this sector the success stories are close to non-existant. Every community should have an East Dulwich Forum - it adds huge value and as you say is cheap and easy to set up using off the peg software. The interesting question is why is it the exception rather than the rule. My guess would be that the moderation burden is huge and that it is failing to monetise like most forums do no matter what they cover.

I'd agree about Harringay Online being another good but incredibly rare example of success in this sector but am slightly surprised by the other two choices. The Hampton People site looks a lot like the err.. Hampton People site from ANM and confusion is bound to reign about which is which. Having the more memorable URL means that even if people intend to go to the former they will end up at the latter. Interestingly Hampton was home to Online Communities who were the pioneers of this kind of stuff but looking at their sites now they have lost a lot of their original energy which reinforces Richard's point about the tragedy of this area.

As for the W14 site this is a complete oddity. I used to live in that post code and basing a site on it seems to miss the point altogether about hyperlocal. It is a kind of border area post code with no central focus you will find people who live there telling you that they live in Hammersmith, Brook Green, West Kensington, Barons Court, Fulham, Holland Park or Shepherd's Bush. As such a fragmented area it doesn't work as a site and making it a closed Ning site to boost sign ups is only hiding this. It's probably not the best site in the area it covers let alone one of the best in the country.

[Tom Britt]

We are celebrating our 9th year as a hyperlocal website, but our success doesn't come online but in the sum of all the media we use: monthly print newsletter, video, radio partnerships locally, and now an app. Think of Rupert Murdock owning all the media in a city, but much smaller.