Making Stuff Happen in 48 Hours
The last couple of days I was involved in another “build a website in 48 hours” event. This time, it was Launch48, organised by a couple of friends of mine, Ian Broom and Adil Mohammed. Thanks to lots of great work from Ian and Adil, some generous sponsors who provided [...]
Continue reading about Launch48 – Launching a Start-up in a Weekend
Greg Sterling over on Search Engine Land shared some interesting findings the other day from a Yahoo study into consumers’ behaviour when choosing local services and providers.
The numbers regarding consumers’ choice of research tools (generic search engine vs. vertical search engine vs. internet yellow pages) are particularly interesting as there’s quite a lot of variation [...]
Continue reading about Local Search Habits: Findings from a Yahoo Study
One of the more successful UK hyperlocal sites so far, UpMyStreet, has had a makeover. It has a new homepage and, according to the site themselves, improved local business search and rating functionality.
Do the updates to their local review system mean they’re keen to get into the space that the likes of Qype and TrustedPlaces [...]
Continue reading about UpMyStreet Gets a Makeover, Improves Local Search
photo credit: Mr. Siegal
According to Journalism.co.uk today, hyperlocal news site Outside.in has confirmed that it will be launching a UK version. They report that the UK site is currently in beta.
Outside.in currently powers ‘buzz maps‘ for the Washington Post that show which places are currently being mentioned most by local bloggers. No doubt they’ll [...]
Continue reading about Outside.in to Launch UK Version of its Hyperlocal News Site
photo credit: Peter Ito
The Guardian’s Oliver Luft reported on Wednesday that the Trinity Mirror-owned Liverpool Echo has launched a map-based news service where they are geotagging news stories and allowing for postcode-based searches.
According to the article, Trinity Mirror have plans to roll this out more widely.
Trinity Mirror also have other experiments with presenting news [...]
Continue reading about Trinity Mirror Starts Geotagging Local News
photo credit: peterblaisephotography
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According to their own press release, HelloMetro has been awarded a trademark from the US patent office for use of the term ‘Hyperlocal’. In a comment on Search Engine Watch, their CEO explains that their use describes their service of “advertising/providing information on the goods and services of others that are of [...]
I just came across these guys: http://www.brownbook.net/
They’re a sort of open yellow pages where anyone can add, edit or review businesses. This is very similar to what sites like WeLoveLocal and Yelp are already doing, but in a world where many small business owners have yet to really get to grips with online marketing, the [...]
Continue reading about Brownbook – a Crowdsourced Yellow Pages
photo credit: Ed Yourdon
Newspapers as we know them are dying. Offline readership numbers are dwindling as more and more people find what they need on the Web. Owners and editors everywhere have been grappling for some time now with how to stay relevant in today’s increasingly online world. Some think the answer is to [...]
Continue reading about Washington Post Hits Hyperlocal Hurdles
photo credit: Tony the Misfit
TechCrunch ran an interesting post-mortem article yesterday by the founder of Meetro, a location-aware instant messaging platform, that recently closed its doors.
Meetro’s idea was to let users download an application onto their wifi-enabled mobile phones that would then allow them to find other Meetro users nearby to chat with.
Paul Bragiel, [...]
Continue reading about Death of a Startup: Why Meetro Failed
I’ve just been catching up with TechCrunch, and read that FatDoor, a social network for neighbours, has closed down. At one point it sounded promising (and had a fancy-looking neighbour-mapping feature), but I guess things didn’t look good in their beta testing. The founders have changed direction, launching a new site called Center’d, with an [...]
