BreakingSFNews.com, BreakingLANews.com and BreakingNYCNews.com broadcast what is happening in each city in real time through a survey of local Twitter feeds and contributions from Twitterers who add tweets to the scrolling news feed using a specific #hashtag system.

The Advent of the Breaking News websites

We’re just beginning to see the development of “breaking news” sites that chronicle and monitor the Tweets and other conversations on a topical or geographical level. MuckRack, apparently launched yesterday, aggregates the Twitter feeds of prominent mainstream media journalists.

Genesis of Breaking News on a Hyperlocal Level

My company, Domus Consulting Group adopted the mission to provide regular folks who happen to be hubs of their community a way to gather their community into compelling online applications like BreakingSFNews. We were early advocates of Twitter and clearly understood how the micro-blogging (aka micro-networking) platforms can tie communities together in a big virtual neighborhood. We also recognized that Twitter’s unique function to facilitate citizen breaking news was compelling (just listen to the buzz today).

The Transparent Development Process

We don’t develop applications in stealth. We develop in iteration by explaining in this blog our concepts, create prototypes as necessary, listen to feedback, and improve the product or service. The chronology for develop BreakingSFNews is literally detailed from this blog’s timeline:

4/10/2009: Real Time Local Advertising – A New Business Model

4/05/2009: BreakingShoppingNews.com: Twitter for Local Advertising

1/10/2009: The New Web 2.5 Opportunity: Creating Media Hubs

12/10/2008: “Breaking News” is a Mass Media Play

12/04/2008: Incorporating Breaking News into Websites and Make Them Compelling Reads

The Give it Away Business Model

We developed the breaking news template that BreakingSFNews is built upon with the intent of giving it away free. We’ve discussed that sharing website development with the people is a new model for spurring adoption of a new marketing paradigm; Ning for DIY social network creation fits into this paradigm. We believe empowering individuals by providing them with plug and play web applications will become more common because it “shares the wealth” and will somewhat disrupt the old VC-based method of stealth website development (why try to build a “monopoly” web property when it can be replicated and given away free in the future?)

A lot of our consulting work so far has been in real estate and in media/advertising, industries that rely on hyperlocal networking for business. We’ve developed hyperlocal Breaking News sites so companies and individuals can tie their communities together with very little financial risk. We even develop the business model behind Breaking News (in progress) so it minimizes business risk as well. And we’ll fully disclose and share all new business models for the benefit of those who adopt Breaking News sites.

Why We Believe Hyperlocal Breaking News is Compelling – it’s in Local Advertising

We discussed this one week ago. Simply put, there is now a void in where local merchants can advertise. They are pulling out of print publications, Yellow Pages and Penny Savers, and can’t figure out how to reach their customer base online. With hyperlocal breaking news sites, local merchants can address their community using Twitter to publish their “daily deals”. Yesterday’s NY Times provided anecdotes on how effective this kind of “advertising” can be. As friend Roberta Murphy put it, “in a Breaking News site, the local merchants aren’t pushing obnoxious ads any more, they are sharing their deals and inviting conversation”. And guess what? It’s free!

(Caveat: Of course, local merchants will need to understand the protocols of social media so they don’t spam and generally act uncouth…)

Everybody is looking for a deal these days; the hope is Breaking News sites will connect local merchants with consumers on the watch for deals.

How You Can Participate

As discussed, the Breaking News template is free to use for anybody interested in building a Breaking News site for their city, i.e. OCBreakingNews.com, SantaBarbaraBreakingNews.com, etc. It literally took me only three hours to set up each of the Breaking News sites, and we teach how to do this.

Join us for a free webinar next Wednesday, April 22 at 10:30pdt/1:30edt and we’ll explain the methodology to get a Breaking News city site up and running. Register here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/526096234.

Mark Cuban proposes his contribution to the Stimulus Plan by allowing entrepreneurs to post “business plans” as comments to his article Open Source Funding. His criteria in a nutshell – business plans are posted for all to see, comment, and steal if they want. Mark sends a non-negotiable contract for funding.

I’m glad Mark is using his media fame to push this financing model into the mainstream.

Stealth is no longer an efficient way to build a business model. In stealth, the world can’t provide feedback for the countless iterations required to fine tune any business model – funding, marketing, product development. In both my blogs Media Transparent and Transparent Real Estate, I propose new business models and strategies up front for feedback. This action does three things: 1) Like an academic publication, it brands the idea, 2) It provides feedback for iterative improvements, and 3) It attracts like minded thinkers who might be partners or supporters of the initiative.

Open source funding is the most efficient way to develop a business model because the most qualified entrepreneurs with the appropriate domain expertise will “rise to the top”. As Mark says:

If it’s a good idea and worth funding, we want it replicated elsewhere. The idea is not just to help you, but to figure out how to help the economy through hard work and ingenuity. If you come up with the idea and get funding, you have a head start. If you execute better than others, you could possibly make money at it.

I agree that in aggregation, the most efficient and productive business models (combined with the hard work) will create economic opportunities. That’s why stealth startups run by 24-year-olds based on an idea won’t work; their lack of domain expertise won’t ever get them funded for anything in an open source world. VCs can be just as guilty… they use stealth to keep ideas hidden among themselves so they may leverage negotiation power over entrepreneurs.

This transparency of business models should be extended across industry disciplines. Last summer, I created the Management Consulting 2.0 slideshow explaining our philosophy that consulting should be open source, not a closed book of research done behind McKinsey doors that can be charged out at $750/hour.

What makes the social media intriguing is its facility to provide instant interpretation of random ideas and acts. These acts, adhoc and experimental by nature, generate interest – controversial, amusement, alternative perspective – within a social sphere, which then extends the premise within hours. This kind of micro-media will filter the best ideas, extend them further, until they are “news”… or worth reporting by mass media. We’re all privy to the incubation of these ideas depending upon the networks we belong to or share.

Here’s the chronology of a simple idea that was proposed today by Jason Goldberg of SocialMedian:

Jason Goldberg – View full feed

posted a message on Twitter

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Ex-securities lawyer Michael Arrington then pipes in the fact that Twitter solicitations for financing is an SEC violation. Jason takes the post down, but it’s recorded at Friendfeed.
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Prompting a Micro-financing venture capital room at Friendfeed, which I join because I think the crowdsource and peer-to-peer investment model is promising.
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And finally chronicled by Mathew Ingram, tech writer at Globe & Mail -  Twitter – a Microfinancing Vehicle