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Six trends impacting hyperlocal in 2012

Six trends impacting hyperlocal in 2012

Here are six trends in 2012 that will impact hyperlocal media and business models. This was originally published at Street Fight last week. 1. Cross platform conversations Livefyre and Disqus show glimpses of how conversations can move from Facebook and Twitter to online media and blog commentary. Local conversations happening on social media, especially Facebook, [...]

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Building Business Models Based on Local Influence

Building Business Models Based on Local Influence

The advent of Klout and other new forms of social influence tabulation mirrors the power shift of media influence from traditional to social channels. Anybody with a voice can build a following, and the new business models evolving around influence metrics allow businesses to reward influencers with the hopes of converting them into advocates. Klout’s first foray [...]

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Klout as Good Will Engine

Klout as Good Will Engine

Klout is known as a metric for assessing social influence. Like Google Page Rank, few understand what else Klout can do beyond being an iconic metric. One overlooked practical role that Klout faciliates is influencer curation. Through curation, brands garner good will by providing recognition, even rewards, to influencers who have synergetic relationships with that [...]

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Twylah, Twitter, News and SEO

Twylah, Twitter, News and SEO

Twylah is a service that aggregates a Twitter feed and compiles the articles they link into a Flipboard like display.   Many reviewers have explained the mechanics of Twylah in far more detail than I can: Robert Scoble: “Twylah lets media brands and celebrities monetize their Twitter stream” Neal Schaffer: “Twitter SEO? Think Twylah“ We’ve [...]

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Five reasons why traditional media advertising revenue is sloping towards zero

Five reasons why traditional media advertising revenue is sloping towards zero

Journalists continue to search for a viable business model that supports online hyperlocal publications, but they won’t ever reach the threshold of revenues to maintain operations if they rely solely on traditional advertising fees from local merchants. That doesn’t mean local advertising is also poised to fall off a cliff. On the contrary, BIA/Kelsey states [...]

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Hyperlocal Media as a Community Service

My article “Hyperlocal as Community Service Media” on Streetfight discusses why building local media resources to serve the community makes sense. Creating local media is no longer the province of media companies, curation and aggregation tools make it easy for anybody to develop a simple local media resource that maintains itself 24×7. The disruptive concept [...]

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Hyperlocal media as a free community service could disrupt advertising models

Hyperlocal media as a free community service could disrupt advertising models

The classic, and perhaps only business model supporting hyperlocal journalistic efforts like Patch.com and other local media is local advertising. On StreetFightMag.com last week, Ted Mann, Digital Development Director for Gannett NJ, discusses why Gannett’s hyperlocal experiment InJersey.com failed. The main and obvious reason is simply local advertising cannot adequately cover expenses. So… What if [...]

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Airbnb creates real estate liquidity

Airbnb creates real estate liquidity

Airbnb (see my previous article on Airbnb for a description of the business) creates a new revenue layer in real estate that supplements cash flow for property owners (and even renters).  Yes, vacation rental sites like HomeAway and VRBO have established rental classifieds system but they operate as advertising media and require upfront annual subscription [...]

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Social travel – how Airbnb changes hospitality, even real estate

Social travel – how Airbnb changes hospitality, even real estate

Airbnb, according to Techcrunch and others, is planning a mega-round raise at a $1 billion+ valuation, and validated social travel in one swoop. It redefines what a “hotel room” is, even one year ago the only viable short term rental space for the masses. Airbnb allows anybody to rent out living space – a refurbished basement, [...]

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Institutionalizing Entrepreneurship and the Education Tradeoff

Institutionalizing Entrepreneurship and the Education Tradeoff

Through one of my new favorite “social discovery” services LetsLunch.com, I had the pleasure of lunch with Sarah Lacy. She brought me her latest book Brilliant Crazy Cocky, a tome to the universal entrepreneurial spirit in six countries she surveyed last year. I read most of it over the weekend (and recommend it highly). One [...]

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