The LocalHero concept
How do you build the perfect local community Web site with news, events, comments and more?
If you manage to, it will be a grand slam. It becomes the talk of the town, people spend more time going there, and local advertisers spend money there.
Newspapers have largely dropped the ball. A dozen or so Internet companies have tried to adapt the community concept online, but none have nailed it. There's Yelp, which specializes in reviews of bars and restaurants. There's Judysbook, which began with a broader community feel, but has since moved toward shopping. There's Insiderpages, which is struggling, and focused on business listings. Smalltown focuses on local business, too. Topix gives you community news. Backfence gets closer, as does ePodunk to coverage of wider community events but their execution and user interfaces have remained unimpressive. Craigslist provides a local marketplace, but stops there.
LocalHero aims to takes both existing content (from local bloggers, papers, movie listings etc) and user generated content, and packages them into local content.
For each town, LocalHero lets you discover stories, comments, places and other users. It has one useful, powerful feature we haven't seen before: You can switch the focus of your region easily using a map feature at the top left of your region. This lets you zoom in or out to include more or less surrounding regions or cities and the information, news, events and comments all adjust in real time.
In this way, we want to be a Wikipedia for local places.
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Copyright 2007 LocalHero.
