The Seattle web wars

It’s interesting to watch how my hometown of Seattle has become an intense battleground in the local web wars. For starters, just look at these breaking news alerts:

Just minutes apart — as is very typical now — sent from three of the stations in town. One station, KING5.com, is where I work. Another station, KIROTV.com, is where my web-savvy friend Todd Mokhtari recently signed on as news director. And the third, KOMOTV.com, has hired Terry Heaton as their online consultant (KOMO’s parent company just bought PegasusNews). Last night, Terry threw one of his hallmark blogger meetups, and he writes, “We’ve a bunch of other cool things planned with bloggers in the Seattle community, and I’m looking forward to becoming a regular fixture there.” Hmmm, Heaton moving into my backyard? I invite the challenge, and as many of you know, I launched the Seattle blog aggregator Citizen Rain several months ago. I also have a bunch more cool stuff in the pipeline.

Oh, and I shouldn’t forget to mention Q13Fox.com and NWCN.com as well.

And TV sites are just a part of the local web wars. Our two newspapers, SeattleTimes.com and SeattlePI.com are both stepping up aggressively, and both sites are very solid. The PI hosts dozens upon dozens of “reader blogs,” and it just launched The Big Blog. Then there’s Crosscut.com, a relatively new regional news site that combines aggregation with some original reporting. There’s SeattleWeekly.com and TheStranger.com — the latter of which has one of the most popular blogs in town, Slog. And let’s not forget Seattlest and Seattle Metroblogging, two “national chain” blogs that have built solid audiences of their own.

So keep an eye on Seattle, folks. Like many other markets, it’s going to get interesting.

12 comments August 3rd, 2007

Get your 99 cent iPhone

The 99 Cent Only Stores of California are putting on a promotion that will certainly draw attention - if not a possible riot. The company has issued a press release that says it will celebrate its 25th anniversary on August 9th by giving the first nine people in line outside its Westchester, CA store a 4GB iPhone for 99 cents. What could go wrong?

9 comments August 3rd, 2007

Morgan Webb debuts daily video show

G4TV’s Morgan Webb has launched a personal side-project called Webb Alert. It’s a daily online video show that focuses on interesting tech stuff of the day. “Like Rocketboom, each show will be no more than 5 minutes long, for easy consumption,” writes Michael Arrington in TechCrunch. “Unlike Rocketboom, I’ve been able to sit through a whole episode - the early content that I’ve seen, including the pilot, is interesting and compelling.” Morgan writes, edits and even shoots all her own stuff, and her husband handles the business side.

4 comments August 3rd, 2007

CBS paid $43 million for MaxPreps

That number came out of CBS’ 10-Q filing, which revealed the acquisition price. And get ready for the high school sports wars, starting in a market near you…

1 comment August 3rd, 2007

Introducing new anchors

WRTV has launched a standalone website as a way to help introduce their new anchor team to the Indianapolis market. ToddAndTrisha.com includes blogs, YouTube videos, slideshows. They’re even asking viewers to suggest places the anchor team should visit during an upcoming market tour. It looks like the site is run on WordPress, and it’s a nice template and design.

24 comments August 3rd, 2007