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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Groupon-like deals can work for real estate, but not as a typical $10 for $20 worth of product purchase. Real estate can’t be sold as a 30% off purchase price item (although they certainly tried variations of this at California real estate investment clubs in 2005). Real estate marketing has generally relied on variations of [...]
On Media Transparent last October, I explored the idea of real time deals, which requires consumption of a daily deal within a limited time frame. Merchants with perishable products – seats at a restaurant, theaters, hotel rooms, airlines – want a deals system that quickly and efficiently fills excess inventory, especially at a moment’s notice. [...]
Local community news has always been hard to produce profitably with scale. Local news is only relevant to those who live within the community, and it makes cost per thousand based advertising models untenable when readership may log in the hundreds. Without a revenue model to hire editors and writers, the cheapest way to source [...]
AOL’s acquisition of the Huffington Post firmly entrenches AOL as a journalistic media endeavor eye-to-eye with Gannett, Murdoch and, gasp, the other newspapers. What is strikingly different about Huffington Post is that content is sourced from celebrities – politicians, actors, college professors, locals – and not from the ivory news desks that still embody the [...]
Can Quora go mainstream to the masses? Can Quora be used effectively as a local media resource and social network for communities that have local questions? The Problem with Local Topics Topics are the defining feature of Quora that allows users to filter their Q&A stream. To filter local Q&A, users will follow local geographical [...]
The recent mainstream media articles demonstrating evidence of Groupon’s shortcomings (including last week’s article) are focused on the consequences of its massive distribution capabilities and non-local presence. First there was the dodgy fake deals in Brazil, then there was a business owner saying offering a Groupon deal was the worst business decision she ever made, [...]
Patrick Kitano is founding Principal of Brand into Media, a unique strategy group working with corporations and organizations to develop social and media-based strategies that engage hyperlocal communities.
I'm the author of Media Transparent, and contributor to Street Fight, Social Media Today, Daily Deal Media, The Customer Collective, and Quora.
I speak on the future of social commerce at conferences associated with social media, local advertising and real estate.
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