Recovering Journalist: Backfence: Lessons Learned

Recovering Journalist: Backfence: Lessons Learned


Lessons from the failure of a user-generated hyperlocal network, thanks to its founder, Mark Potts. His advice:

• "Engage the community. This may be the single most critical element. It's not about technology ... it's not about whizbang Web 2.0 features. It's about bringing community members together to share what they know..."

• A top-down, "if you build it, they will come" strategy absolutely does not work, and that's not what Backfence did... Backfence employed a group of talented journalists and community representatives who sought out and interacted constantly with members of each of our communities to encourage them to participate. Over time, in our more mature communities, this really bore fruit. You have to get a critical mass of community participation and eyeballs coming to the site. You have to get the community involved. There’s no substitute for that.
• Hyperlocal content is really mundane. We heard this criticism all the time. You bet it is—if you're an outsider looking in. To members of the community who actually live with these local issues, it's vitally important. It's precisely that mundane content, and the conversations around it, that brings life to hyperlocal sites.
• Trust the audience. We were asked all the time...how we avoided having Backfence become a nasty free-for-all. There were many answers... But most of all, we trusted the audience to do the right thing—and invariably it did. All of that is why we can boast that we very, very rarely had to police Backfence by deleting content. ... The audience took responsibility for what went on at each local Backfence site ...
• Leverage social networking. The rise of MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and the commercial version of Facebook—virtually all of which have happened since Backfence launched more than two years ago—demonstrates the power of social media. Local communities are social beehives anyway. Why not take advantage of existing local connections and the virality and marketing reach of social tools such as member profiles, "friending" tools, widgets and the ability of members to exchange messages with each other? This was an element we unfortunately were unable to get off the drawing board at Backfence, because of business issues and other priorities.
• There is most certainly a robust hyperlocal advertising business. Indeed, local advertisers are eager for new online advertising vehicles. I've seen it suggested repeatedly that Backfence failed because it couldn't sell advertising to local merchants. Not true. In fact, we sold ads to more than 400 advertisers, more than any other similarly sized hyperlocal effort that I'm aware of. It was clear that we had staked out an affordable and lucrative corner of the local ad market. Ads in local newspapers—even community weeklies—are too expensive for many small local businesses. Alternatives like the Yellow Pages, Val-Pak-style coupon flyers and local radio are similarly pricey. And most small businesses don't know from AdSense. That presents a ripe target for a talented, hard-working ad sales team concentrating on offering low-cost ads to local businesses who want to reach members of their communities through hyperlocal sites. It's a rich, untapped marketplace.
• If there's anything I've learned from Backfence, it's that the power and potential of local communities still is waiting to be tapped.

Thanks, Mark!

Thursday August 2, 2007 - 01:25pm (EDT)

Local Search Bonanza Stirs Patent Investigation - Sramana Mitra on Strategy

Local Search Bonanza Stirs Patent Investigation - Sramana Mitra on Strategy

Excerpt:
Last year in Feb the Kelsey Group made the eye-catching forecast that the global online local search market is set to explode from $3.4 billion in 2005 to $13 billion in 2010. This put the growth rate at a handsome 30.4% over the next 4-5 years.

...local search is a very high growth area, and one that companies like Google are drooling over.

Against that backdrop, Local.com’s (NASDAQ: LOCM) recent award of a patent for indexing and retrieving web-related information by geographical location assumes serious significance. At least superficially, the patent covers much of what giants like Google, Yahoo, Verizon, Ask and InfoSpace are already offering in the local search area. Local.com’s patent has therefore set the buzz rolling as to whether the Irvine, California based company is up for acquisition by giants like Google, Yahoo or IAC.

My Take

The local advertising market is ripe for revolution. Who is leading the charge toward this innovation? Advertisers? Nope. Consumers who simply demand more than bulky yellow books dropped onto their driveways or entryways.

Even septuagenarians are using Yahoo Local or Google to look up phone numbers. Twenty-something first time homebuyers certainly expect more.


The door is open for a new model. Clearly large investors are investing in this space. The local ad model of the future has not yet been introduced. A model that will literally "turn the Yellow Pages 'inside out and upside down'".


Stay tuned !!

Thursday August 2, 2007 - 07:19am (EDT)

Local search gets profitable for local business

Entry for July 27, 2007

Now local search gets profitable for local business. Announcing Local Leap from Vertical Leap

Release Date: 26 July 2007

Vertical Leap, pioneer of managed search engine marketing, has launched Local Leap, a new search optimisation service specifically for businesses whose market is local, rather than global.

Local Leap gives high street shops, professionals such as solicitors, accountants plus service providers including plumbers, specialists in topiary through to catering the opportunity to realistically compete in the main search engines and to see a profitable return from their website due to increased sales leads.

My Take


This effort aims to place participating local vendors at the top of the search results heap.

If all SEO experts are attempting to win the same limited real estate, then any positive results they achieve can only be temporary. The next local competitor who comes along using the same tool - or a similar one - will knock them off.

Missing elements - social search; viral; economic incentive; differentiation based on consumer experience

Tags: socialsearch, localsearch, wordofmouth, angieslist, judysbook, yellowpages

Friday July 27, 2007 - 07:23am (EDT)

YouGottaCall - First E-mail to Prospective Members

Excerpted from email sent to team members.

Project Update Vol. 1 Issue 1

July 24, 2007

Here is a newsletter that will begin to provide you with information on the progress of the venture we've discussed - our team, our development efforts, our installations and the market opportunity.

Our site is still not hosted as we are still in stealth mode. Please treat this information as confidential - do not reproduce or forward it. If you wish to be removed from our mailing list please opt out below by clicking "Leave this list".

This first issue highlights an article published today by The Kelsey Group. The Kelsey Group is a "leading provider of strategic research and analysis, data and competitive metrics on Yellow Pages, electronic directories and local media."

"When Will Yellow Pages Come to the Social?" observes that the Yellow Page publishers have been slow to adopt social networking as a way to increase their considerable local market influence.

"With the wealth of local content and obvious verticals, IYPs could take a local leadership position in topical areas such as local services/contractors, home improvement, home decorating, financial, health care, entertainment, weddings and other lifestyle oriented topics that would be attractive to social media users."

The writer quotes Sebastian Provencher, as saying Social search has a great future but I think its difficult to start from scratch. There might be an amazing opportunity out there for directory publishers (and anyone operating a local search site with a good amount of traffic) to launch a social search application."

We think the opposite is true. Large publishers might be unable or unwilling to respond to opportunities quickly enough. Plus, the Internet allows start-ups with good ideas to outmaneuver giants.

The article also cites Boomj as a social networking with an e-commerce component. What a great idea!

Please feel free to write or call to learn more about our project.

Yours truly,

Tim Tracey

Wednesday July 25, 2007 - 06:32am (EDT)

Ad 2.0 or Advertising 101?

My Take...


David Polinchock of Brand Experience Lab asks a Soflow forum "Are we spending too much time trying to come up with cool ways for people to talk about a mediocre product rather then developing cool products that people actually want to talk about?"

My take - if by "we" you mean ad agencies, then the answer is 'yes'. And I think that traditional media outlets from Yellow Pages through television networks are going along for the ride.

Cool products are developed through the genius of entrepreneurs. Then buzz happens. Great products and services create their own buzz organically and unstoppably. As long as the supply exists, buzz will keep selling it.

The best ad campaigns can only achieve short-term results when they create buzz around 'un-buzz-worthy' products. A different approach is needed that recognizes the potential for Web 2.0 - one that utilizes and depends on the continual input of satisfied customers.

This revolutionary approach would ignore traditional advertising. It would harness and encourage the organic excitement consumers feel when they experience something truly satisfying. This happens everywhere every day. "My back feels great - you gotta call my chiropractor!.. You have got to stay at this inn!.. You have got to call my landscaper!.. Oh - you are getting a new car? You gotta call my dealer¿"

This approach would exploit the forces that spawned each of marketing's recent evolutionary steps - multi-level, big-box, affiliate, viral, participatory - and marry them to word-of-mouth seamlessly and naturally. This is the potential of Web 2.0. If advertisers' aims fall short they'll end up with AOL instead of Google.

Wednesday August 30, 2006 - 02:30pm (EDT)

New Word-of-Mouth Marketing Alliance

"The three questions most clients have when considering a WOM program are:
How do I identify my influencers and customer evangelists?
How do I activate them?
And, how do I measure the effectiveness of my WOM program?"

Read the original article (April 25, 2006) - ComBlu; Keller Fay Group :: The Keller Fay Group and ComBlu Form Word-of-Mouth Marketing Alliance

Wednesday April 26, 2006 - 07:16am (EDT)

My take... Vonity.com

Vonity is onto something in the social network space.

• It’s a social network with a professional purpose.
• It provides financial incentive for participation.
• It controls the communication between participants, so it can track and collect its revenues – initially.
• It enables charitable contributions of earnings.

But -

• It wants to be viral – but it is missing the built-in motivation for spreading the word. Why tell others about it when that might reduce your chance for earning revenue?
• It loses control of the commerce after the initial communication.

'You want to talk with me about developing and launching a next-generation, viral, word-of-mouth referral portal? Contact me on Vonity for $1.00 per minute!

Sunday April 23, 2006 - 02:26pm (EDT)