At Home with Placeblogs

One of the more dynamic presentations of the morning was that of Lisa Williams from H20Town, who focused on what she termed “placeblogs,” sites that she said are about the “lived experience of a place” as opposed to the “news” of the place. Williams argues that although their growth is little recognized, placeblogs are exploding – 648 at last count. As a matter of fact, she showed the group a mockup of a new directory of placeblog sites called Placeblogger.com, which will include headlines from each.

Making the growth possible, Williams believes, is that a relatively small number of consistent contributors can help make a site work, especially as that base provide a platform for more casual contributions by a larger number of people. The flip side, though, is that it’s probably unrealistic to think local sites will spontaneously take off with huge numbers of contributors. Also, the success of particular placeblogs may rely heavily on hitting what she characterized as a demographic hotspot, often communities of 20,000-70,000 in population, that are economically difficult for mainstream media to cover, but that have enough scale to create a natural pool of blog participants. Yet, other challenges remain, she acknowledge. Among them: The cost of acquiring local advertisers, especially as national chains push out local businesses. Williams said, in fact, that she’s not sure whether placeblogging can be profitable enough for it to be a large-scale commercial opportunity for funding sources like venture capitalists. But one thing going for placeblogs like H20Town is what she said was a feeling users have that the site is “our site,” a feeling of connection and ownership she believes few still feel about their local newspapers. -- A. Adam Glenn