Backfence.com begins backpedaling
David Johnson January 16th, 2007
washingtonpost.com reports on the ongoing issues at backfence.com, the hyperlocal cj news site in their own backyard. Backfence kicked off the first communities in beltway suburbs McLean and Reston back in 2005, but has had trouble attracting enough users to get the site to click both in terms of contributions and, subsequently, in revenue. While they managed to secure some decent venture capital, recent departures of key executives, including one of the founders, signals serious trouble. LR pal Vin Crosbie is quoted in the article, “Realistically, it’s going to take close to 10 years for the business models to be there and for there to be enough advertisers willing to give money to hyperlocal start-ups. Backfence’s problem is that it was too early.”
3 Comments Add your own
1. Z | January 16th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Media analysts agree that many readers are looking for hyperlocal content
They left out the part that the readers want someone else to create the content, as they’re too busy to do it themselves.
2. Swift Loris | January 16th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
From the potential user’s perspective (i.e., mine), I suspect that readers are more likely to become contributors when they see others like themselves contributing.
It might be worth a try to seed the site with ringers, quietly hiring a dozen or so community residents (NOT professional writers) to start the ball rolling by making posts and generating conversations among themselves on their own pet topics, keeping them at it for however long it takes to motivate others to join in.
There was an article in the NYTimes yesterday about a company called AmericanTowns.com that’s trying to start local sites all over the country. I was surprised to find a site already in existence for my town, but disappointed to see that it had been set up to look as though it were a going concern when there was as yet no local participation, and where the as-yet empty areas reserved for reader contributions were a couple of layers deep into the site. It wasn’t at all inviting.
If readers can see immediately–prominently on the home page–that their fellow community members are creating content, I think they’re much more likely to be drawn in.
3. Z | January 17th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Drawn in to read, maybe. But my experience with this sort of thing has found that most people don’t want to have to work to contribute. They’d rather just read.
Hyper local news will work with community input in some places, but I think most attempts will require paid contributors/journalists.
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