I take great delight in the Carlsbad Patch updates on my smartphone every morning. And the Fwix local app on my iPad. But why do I feel they are my “guilty pleasures”? Because there is a rap out there that hyperlocal doesn’t scale and these are toys.
Is it still the case?
Patch now has a …

Local and vertical content is eagerly sought by national players, from The New York Times to Yahoo, MSN/Bing to AOL. Now, Thompson Reuters is leading the local, vertical charge for wire services.
In an aggressive push to lure traditional U.S. media away from the Associated Press, the information industry giant is moving into aggregation with Reuters America, striking …

While 2010 has been lauded as “the year of local,” it has also seen an influx of interest and spending by national brands to drive neighborhood-level store traffic. These initiatives have taken diverse (and sometimes highly publicized) forms: Gap’s deal-a-day offer through Groupon, Best Buy’s mobile check-in experiments with Shopkick, and a host of real-time inventory …

TBD.com, the Washington, D.C., hyperlocal news site branding the online operations of Allbritton Communication’ WJLA-TV and Newschannel 8 under the TBD umbrella, is tabling its local ad network, citing limited advertiser interest.
The site currently has agreements with more than 200 blogs and local sites (up from 120 at launch in August) to link to their work …

There is a lot going on in online media on the East Coast evidenced by the panel on geolocation here at the Internet Summit in Raleigh, North Carolina, sponsored by TechMedia and Southern Capital Ventures. Geolocation continues to be major news given the press coverage of Gowalla, Foursquare, Google and Facebook, which are all chasing …

CityGrid Media (formerly Citysearch) will extend its paid base of 800,000 advertisers across thousands of neighborhood news pages, courtesy of a display advertising deal with Outside.in. The two companies have been quietly conducting pilot tests of custom ads in “a couple” of markets, leading to the wider rollout.
Outside.in CEO Mark Josephson tells us that the …

One of the big hopes for local this year is … national. As local targeting tools get more granular, there has been an upsurge in national/local advertisers, especially as they focus on touching consumers on the local purchase level. Gannett Digital and MediaBrands’ Geomentum, for instance, are both riding the crest of national-local activities.
Gannett …

Since its origin as an exclusively online newspaper drawing together the work of dozens of community blogs and contributors, The Sacramento Press has since diversified well beyond its pure publisher roots, complementing its core with a local advertising network, a daily deals platform and an emerging social media consulting practice. As a result, cofounders Ben Ilfeld …

AOL is taking the plunge into the competitive deal-a-day space, launching Wow! as an integrated deals sites under the larger brand that will serve “your bargain of choice” from both local and national offers.
Increasingly, group buying offers are sold like advertising units, not promotional items. The initial value proposition is strong: no upfront costs, strong …

As “the media capital of the world,” New York is rife with daily newspapers, high-culture magazines and lifestyle publications, yet Trevor Sumner says he had “no idea what was going on in my neighborhood. I couldn’t even keep up with restaurants in the East Village.” That lack of district-level information inspired NearSay, a start-up site …

Sorting content by neighborhoods and ZIP codes can boost usage considerably, as HelloMetro recently discovered. The 10-year-old city guide gets more than 6 million monthly unique visitors and has 1,500 local sites. In a case study published today, it said it received a 10 percent jump in traffic after it started using a neighborhood and …

The concept of a local affinity club for like-minded members looking for deals is always out there, although it’s never really been mastered. Now, in the wake of Groupon’s success, the club concept looks like a vertical take on group-buying — and eminently doable.
Back in the ’90s, The Family Entertainment Network tried to do …

The Las Vegas Sun is focusing on hyperlocal “Home News” neighborhood information that positions it for Yellow Pages-like sales, according to Sun President Brian Greenspun, who was speaking at a recent conference at the University of Las Vegas Nevada.
Greenspun, who works with hyperlocal pioneer Rob Curley, says Home News allows users to tailor the …

I had the opportunity to meet with Yext CEO Howard Lerman and President Brian Distelburger to talk about their recent product additions and approach to the SMB marketplace. What struck me as I entered their NYC loft-style office is the energy from the growing telephone sales team. The impression is that this is a company …

The latest attempt to make hyperlocal a sustainable reality came today with Allbritton Communications’ launch of TBD.com, a hyper metro site for the Washington, D.C., area. Allbritton, which has sunk “under $5 million” into the project to date, hopes it will grab hold of the D.C. audience in the same way that its Politico has …

The Sacramento area is fast becoming Ground Zero for local blog networks. McClatchy’s Sacramento Connect, a project carved from The Sacramento Bee, is a content connector for 70+ area blogs and Web sites. It started incubating last summer and was fully in place by March.
Connect, which is subtitled “best of the local Web,” can …

If people would only pay for their local content, nobody would be worried about the future of local news. But so far, most have proved less than willing. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar, however, is testing out new models at his Honolulu “Civil Beat” site, per NYU’s Jay Rosen, who talked with TBD.com’s blog.
Full …

DataSphere, which creates hyperlocal blogs and sells advertising packages to small businesses on behalf of local broadcasters, will now do the same for Gannett Broadcasting,
The deal initially covers ten of Gannett Broadcasting’s 19 markets, including Atlanta, Washington D.C., Tampa, Buffalo, Sacramento, Grand Rapids, Little Rock, Portland, ME and Macon, GA. Gannett is keeping the …

“Neighbors Online,” a new study from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, has found that 20 percent are using digital tools such as e-mail, texting and social networks to communicate with their neighbors. Twenty-two percent have signed up to receive local issue alerts via e-mail or SMS.
Eleven percent also report reading …

Main Street Connect, a new hyperlocal network founded by former community newspaper executive Carll Tucker, former SmartReply exec John Falcone and others in the New York suburbs, notified the SEC on May 26 that it has raised $3.97 million for “working capital” from ten angel investors. The same form notes that the company will …