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What I've learned about Hyperlocal

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 by Dave Winer.

First, the news -- InBerkeley.com is coming to an end. 

Other projects are consuming more of my time. And in the last couple of months, family stuff has taken me away from Berkeley, and I'm not sure where my attention will be in the future. So a big part of my decision to move on is personal.  

But I've also learned why sites that we're calling "hyperlocal" are difficult, and why I failed to get the site to grow the way I hoped it would.  

I thought we could apply the same approach that worked in bootstrapping weblogs, RSS and podcasting for a local site. One or two people start writing about their personal experiences. A small audience develops. Debates, discussions follow. More perspectives. At every step you invite people to participate. You always ask for the people who used to be called the audience to become full participants. That's how the idea scales. As I said, it worked for blogging and related technologies. 

Instead, what happened at InBerkeley.com is that the people thought we were running a news organization, and they did stories the way reporters do them. That can't possibly work, imho -- for the same reason the news industry is in crisis.  

An example. Suppose you're writing a story about a parade on Shattuck Ave at noon and you don't happen to be there, you just heard about it from a friend, but feel you have enough information to write a story. Now you want a picture for the story -- in fact, you think that without a picture you can't run the story. The reporter will hold it, but the blogger runs it anyway, and at the end asks if anyone has a picture. It's that little difference that makes the hyperlocal idea scale, and it's what my colleagues at InBerkeley were unwilling to do. 

Instead, we got in trouble, twice, for taking copyrighted material from other sites. The first time it happened, I apologized, and nothing terrible happened. The second time, I decided we had to shut the site down, because we were doing it totally wrong. I want to stress, this is my opinion, but as one of the founders, it's my reputation that's out there. I didn't think what we were doing was noble, or even very good. Not something I was prepared to stand behind.  

Further, I was sure that at some point I would be giving a talk and there would be a reporter in the crowd who would ask how news can reboot if it's dependent on scarfing copyrighted work from pros. Now if I get asked the question I can say I think it's possible, but we failed to prove it at InBerkeley.com. And I'll be telling the truth.  

The other people at the site, including my former partner Lance Knobel, are going to start a new site, and I wish them the best. It's possible at some point I may even contribute, if they want my contribution.