Congrats to Helio on their new device, the Heat, which was introduced today. As you know at Metroblogging we’ve partnered with Helio and provide content to all of their handsets right along with BoingBoing, Digg, and Wikipedia. All this slick content plus an pretty impressive list of features is sure to turn quite a few heads. I’ve had a Helio since the original KickFlip and can’t stop playing with them. Here’s more news on CNet, MobileBurn and Slashgear.

The goal of the entrepreneur in residence program is to help new Internet entrepreneurs with their ventures by providing a unique and collaborative infrastructure. “I’m thrilled to be in The Groop offices and can’t wait to see what comes from our joint efforts” Sean remarked. By working in such close proximity with The Groop, Sean is able to organically transmit the knowledge and experience he has acquired working on his own projects. “I’m excited to have Sean in our office” commented Groop Creative Director Jose Caballer. “I really admire the work he’s doing with Metroblogging and his part in our resident entrepreneur program is resulting in especially positive collaboration.” Beyond the constructive business aspects of this relationship Sean also noted that, “this place has much better lighting than my kitchen.”

Full press release is here.

Everyone involved with any aspect of local blogging has spent much of the last week talking about BackFence, since the chaos going on behind close doors over there seems to have spilled out into the street. Quick background - The company was founded in 2005 and raised a VC round of $3 million with just one local site online but with the promise of selling ad space on that and more community sites they would continue to develop. Over the next year they added several sites and acquired Bayosphere bringing their total to 13 sites. This month amidst claims of Execs and board member disagreements, there have been massive layoffs (some reports say that 12 of the 18 employees were let go) capping with the CEO walking out this week.

Wow.

So what the hell happened? I think the biggest, most obvious problem is that BackFence was trying to sell a community that they didn’t have. I’ve never talked to any of the folks there, but from following their project for the last year I got the impression that they believed simply putting a site online and calling it a community would create a community. As someone who has been involved with a number of online communities and is obsessed with local media, I’m not of that opinion.

It seems that I’m not alone in that take either, Amy Gahran wrote on Poynter Online:

“In my experience, community-based online media thrives when there’s strong participation and collaboration. It’s not enough just to read the news there, or even to publish your own stories there. And Backfence never really got the participation/engagement part down, as far as I could tell.”

Greg Cohn said something similar in this comment on PaidContnent:

“As anyone who’s successfully built a community-based company will tell you, it’s authentic community cultivation first, features second—and those features should be highly driven by the desires and quirks of the community—and marketing third.

…

“As for Backfence, nobody I know is surprised by their failure to take root given their “if you build it, they will come” approach, their tackling of the three needs above in reverse order, and their business decision to take venture capital to franchise and expand a model they had never proved and were ultimately unable to make work even in a single flagship location. Bayosphere’s failure as a business was equally unsurprising given its failure as a community…”

It shouldn’t be surprising that the “community” in a community site is a very important aspect. Even more so if that is part of your sales pitch. Of course this hasn’t stopped people from speculating that it’s the idea of local blogging as a business that is flawed rather than this specific execution. Folks like Mark Boland, Mathew Ingram and Fred Wilson are asking out loud if aggregation sites, such as Placeblogger are a more sustainable, and scalable option.

Obviously at Metroblogging, we disagree with that notion. Don’t get me wrong, I love sites like Placeblogger and Outside.In - I’m a local junkie so the more avenues to find cool content the better - but the content is what I’m ultimately looking for. I’ve never considered aggregation a business model because it’s so easily replicated, and customizable with any number of tools that anyone online has access to. While these services are fantastic for finding new things, on a daily basis my own RSS reader serves up a more tailored collection of content that was built to my specific needs. Good content on the other hand can only be found at it’s source.

Susan Mernit jumps into the discussion saying:

“One thing it’s hard not to mention when we get into this hyperlocal, sustainable business question is the issue of scale. Most of the really good–and viable–hyperlocal sites–are small businesses that serve a focused audience, with decent ad revenues but nothing like the big numbers VCs need for their $5 to $13 MM investments.”

So certainly scaling is an issue, right? Well yes and no. Putting $3 million into an thriving community is going to have an entirely different effect than putting $3 million into a community that doesn’t exist. Scaling correctly with local can be boiled down simply to not putting the cart before the horse. It’s been over 3 years since we launched our first local blog in Los Angeles and we’ve been growing consistently every since to the point that we now have sites in 51 cities around the world. Of course we’ve had speedbumps like anyone else, but the more we trusted in our community the better things have worked out. A major turning point for us was when we stopped building blogs in cities where we thought we should have them and started building them in cities were people were asking for us. Our blog in Karachi, Pakistan is a perfect example of kind of thinking. We let the site itself (it’s readers and writers) point the direction we moved in and it’s become one of the most vibrant communities in our network generating almost 24,000 comments in the last 2 years (just recently passing up our original Los Angeles site which is currently around 24,800).

An issue that comes up again and again with local is just that, it’s local. By definition this means it is “pertaining to a city, town, or small district rather than an entire state or country.” You can’t compare a site about gadgets to a site about the city of Portland. The audience is inherently different because while there might be millions of people around the world wanting to read about gadgets, there are only half a million people living in Portland. On a local level there is a cap at how many people will ever be readers of your site. Expecting a million or more views a day from a blog about a city with less than that many people in it’s entire population is insane. For contrast, the Portland Mercury, one of the largest and most successful alt weeklies in the country, prints just over 40,000 copies a week. On a local level, it’s more important how many people in that city you are reaching.

However on a global level, there are an unlimited amount of cities which is where a network of individual city blogs like what we’re building with Metroblogging really has the ability to scale. To this date we’ve never taken any outside funding and if left completely alone our sites will continue to grow and generate more revenue each month. Of course with increased traffic comes increased costs of keeping the sites online, but the existing community is what allows this growth to sustain itself. Taking funding before the community exists simply puts too much strain on the sites and doesn’t allow them to grow.

–
A few other people talking about this:
BackFence CEO Resigns Amidst Downsizing - Local Onliner
Behind the Backfence Breakup - Matt Weir’s blog @ New Assignment

Take your local media back with Metroblogging and Helio! Starting today Metroblogging can be found on all Helio mobile devices. On any Helio phone under the “Surf Helio” option you will now find Metroblogging along with the likes of The Onion, Slate, Yahoo! and Maxim. Helio is clearly focused on providing quality content for their users, and we’re excited that they’ve added Metroblogging as a part of that experience.

Working with our partner WINKsite we have created a network of mobile sites optimized and specifically designed for Helio’s line of mobile devices. This integration will make it a snap for people to read about their hometowns from the unique perspective provided by our local Metrobloggers.

Metroblogging is already available on any web capable mobile phone at mobile.metblogs.com.

Also: Helio Mag announces this as well.

Last week I pointed to a post by a blogger in Bangalore called Jace called “What is Metroblogging?” He spent some serious time looking at (at least a few of) our sites and wrote a pretty detailed review of what he thinks we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, and how we could improve on it. My initial reaction was that while Jace had clearly spent a good deal of time on this post and offered some very thoughtful suggestions, he was missing some of the core of what we are doing which unfortunately skewed a lot of what he was getting at. (It’s worth noting that at least one of his concerns, about how comments are handed, is a criticism more of how blogging software works in general and not something Metroblogging is doing specifically, perhaps those thoughts would have been better fitting in a post called “What is MoveableType?” - more about that in the comments on his site)

Right away I sent it off to our authors to get their take on it. I asked them if they had any comments on it to either post them there or e-mail them to me directly. Now with 34 comments the post looks to be the most active on his site, and needless to say my inbox has been full of discussion about this ever since. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to respond, because I really do appreciate that he took the time to look at and write about us, at the same time some of the things he’s calling problems I think are our strengths. This isn’t a new issue, often the criticism we hear is people complaining that we’re not doing something that we’re not trying to do in the first place. This usually comes in the form of anonymous snippy comments and is just ignored, but Jace was taking a more straightforward approach and that deserved something better in return, I thought.

As I was thinking about his specific points, and considering writing a post on each of them, I was thinking that a longwinded reply arguing minutia probably wouldn’t be read by anyone, and the little things aren’t that important anyway. His post was called “What is Metroblogging?” which implies a larger, more sweeping question, so a more general answer seems more fitting. I was going to write about how we’re not called metroBLOGGING for nothing, and that the blog aspect of what we’re doing is front and center always. We’re not metroNEWS or metroEVENTS and we’re certainly not metroHIVEMIND. People are the important part of blogs, and that is something we’ve always felt was an important part of Metblogs. As I was writing this I kept referencing comments or e-mails from our authors and thought that perhaps this might paint a better picture. I’ve tried to decentralize a lot of things from day one, so maybe the answer of what we are should come from the people who actually make us what we are. One thing a lot of people, myself included, latched onto was his comment about an author who lost their umbrella. This is a key point of contention in his post, and something the authors seem to really pick up on. Jace wrote:

“…the result is akin to putting the team in a glass cage, where they make an exhibit of themselves along with their words. That it rained in your favourite city may be welcome news, but that your poster lost his umbrella in the process of arriving home to file the report is unwanted clutter. It may serve to strengthen the poster’s identity, but that identity is swamped by the overall bulk of Metblogs, and as such, is only accessible to dedicated readers, the kind who regularly visit the comments section.

…

“This is why being informed that your poster lost his umbrella is irritating. It is of little consequence to the supposed topic at hand, the city itself. Such detail belongs in the poster’s personal journal, where readers gather more for who the poster is than for what is being said.”

Personally I like reading about the lost umbrella. It’s the kind of thing would never see in your local newspaper or on the evening news, and offers something unique to blogging in general. Tiffany from Metroblogging DC agrees with her comment:

“I think I disagree with the idea that details such as the blogger losing his umbrella on the way home are universally annoying. The Metroblogging “brand,” if you will, has never been predicated around being a dispassionate observation of “news” in the city. If that’s all we were, we’d be Gothamist. And there’s nothing wrong with Gothamist, but they have their editorial voice, and we have ours. And ours has been about what it means to be a person LIVING in the particular city, not the city itself. It’s the people who are on display at Metroblogging, and the city is their backdrop. “

There is a bit of a follow up that that gets into the question of if the authors in a city are writing for the people in that city, or for the readers from the rest of the world. We’ve always maintained that Metblogs should be of use first and foremost to the people in the city they are being written about. If people from elsewhere want to check that out, they are more than welcome, especially if what’s going on locally is of national or global interest, but the people in the city are the primary focus. Since life in New York is different than life in Karachi, the feel of these sites is going to be different to fit those cities. The comments on his site end with Colleen from Los Angeles adding this final bit about individual style showing it’s face on the blog:

“I’ve thought a lot about what makes MetBlogs different from {your city name here} blogs, and to me, MetBlogs is an experiental thing: we (individual writers) experience our cities and filter that experience through our consciousness, then express it in our style. I know, I know–that sounds so simplistic, it’s almost asinine.

“But really, the boingboing model you brought up is a great example, and always the model I felt we came closest to, even if no one articulated it to me. BoingBoing is a directory of wonderful things, but only the wonderful things that its participants find wonderful. So it’s a lot about those four (or five? or how many, now?) people sort of fitting in so there’s some diversity of stuff, some color in the voice, but not so much that it feels ‘off-brand’.”

Spencer, also from LA, comments via e-mail about MB not fitting in the mold, but not really trying to to begin with:

“It seems to me that most of these analysis of Metblogs always start with something along the lines of “here’s my pre-existing expectation of what a group blog or community-specific blog should do and here’s an analysis of why MB doesn’t line up with those expectations,” rather than really asking, objectively, “What is Metroblogging?”

“I know this differs a bit from what [the post says] about what MB does and who our audience is, but personally I’ve never given a shit whether other bloggers get what MB is about because, IMHO, MB is the blog for people who don’t read blogs relentlessly. It’s about real life, and the day-to-day aspects of living in the city you live in and the fact that other people are out there experiencing it too. Sometimes that means you’re interested in what’s going on in city hall, other times it means you just want to point out a funny billboard to your friends. It’s directly connected to what’s going on outside your door in the physical world, and that’s why I have all sorts of friends that don’t read blogs but that do read ours.”

Julie from Metroblogging Orlando agrees, and goes back to the umbrella:

“I agree with many of the comments: it doesn’t sound like this guy knows Metblogs. I want to know if somebody lost their umbrella and it’s raining. What happens to a guy like that? Don’t give me the city; give me the PEOPLE in the city.”

So does Markland in LA:

“I also think the “I lost my umbrella posts” are good - what I like about b.la is that in addition to community news, we have random rants. We’re a BLOG afterall, and I think trying to be too much like mainstream media is actually unprofessional.”

Sherry from Metroblogging Montreal adds more to this idea:

“In the original post, there was an example used about how he just wants to know that it rained in such and such a city but that it’s irrelevant and too personal if the author mentions having forgotten his umbrella. I absolutely disagree. If I want to know that it rained in a particular city, I can go to the weather network, plug in a city name, and find out the weather there. Anyone can do that. I want to know how the author feels about it.

“When it comes to news, I can go to any Montreal news site and see what’s going on in my city. However, what makes me want to read (and what made me want to write for) the Montreal Metroblogging site is the fact that the authors add a personal spin to it, explaining why they feel it’s worth mentioning.

“I think the true beauty of Metroblogging is the fact that it ISN’T a clone of just another news site. That’s what makes it special and fun.”

Again it’s the people that are important, and it’s the bigger picture that we’re showing by focusing on the individuals. Sure any of our blogs can be looked at on an entry by entry basis, but that isn’t the intent. The sum is definitely greater than the parts. By seeing the personal observations of a handful of people in a city, you get a feel for what life in that city is like in a way that one single post by one single person could never do.

I’m going to wrap this excessively long post up with a thought about MB from a brand new contributor for Metroblogging Manila. On her personal blog, Toni writes about Metblogs and what drew her to us, and in fact gives a very clear definition of what we’re doing:

“What I liked about Metroblogging is that it’s a pretty personal web of blogs. I like how casual this network’s atmosphere is. That’s what encouraged me to apply. The entries aren’t too formally written — it’s as if you’re taking a tour of the city with a friend of yours. We’re encouraged to write about our favorite hang-outs, things we like (or dislike) doing, or perhaps things that catch our attention in the city.”

So, there you have it.

Another Press Release for this week…

—

Metroblogging is pleased to announce its partnership with Federated Media Publishing, a company that connects a select group of author-driven websites to world class progressive marketers. Now handling advertising across this expansive network of local sites, this partnership with Federated Media is sure to excite marketers who are trying to make an impact with such an engaged and influential audience as the group that reads and writes Metroblogging.

“We’re very excited to be working with John and the whole Federated team,” says Richard Ault, Partner at Metroblogging. “They are at the forefront of helping independent publishers succeed and we are proud to join a network containing so many amazing authors and websites.”

“Metroblogging is a great example of author driven media at its best,” said John Battelle, founder and Chair of Federated Media. “It’s clear their model is taking off, and readers love the local focus of Metroblogging’s extensive network.”

Federated Media represents “best of breed” independent publishing sites, with a focus on high quality authors catering to influential and highly engaged audiences. Through its advertising, technology, publishing, and business development services, FM connects independent weblog authors, marketers and influential audiences in an ongoing conversation that feeds everyone involved. The sites in FM’s network include BoingBoing.net, Buzzmachine.com, Digg.com, Dooce.com, Fark.com, GigaOm.com and more than 25 others.

With 45 active sites, Metroblogging is the largest and fastest growing network of city-specific blogs on the Web. From San Francisco to Bangkok, from Karachi to Toronto, Metblogs are a hyper-local look at what’s going on in the great cities of the world. A hand-picked core of regional bloggers give each site a new perspective on daily life; less calendar listings, more friendly advice. With Metblogs, you can read about life and times in your neighborhood, your favorite places to visit, places where you’ve never been, or get a feel for them all with the daily “best of” blog on the hub at Metroblogging.com. Metroblogging is owned and developed by Bode Media and was selected in Forbes Magazine’s Best of the Web, 2005 in the “City Blogs” category.

Metroblogging: www.metroblogging.com
Richard Ault
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (415) 794-7094

Federated Media: www.federatedmedia.net
Jennifer Charette
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (415) 332-6955

Here’s the release we’re sending out shortly…

—

For Immediate Release

METROBLOGGING ANNOUNCES ALL-CITIES GLOBAL FEED
Visit the World’s Great Cities via RSS

Today the global blog network Metroblogging is releasing a single RSS feed that contains recent posts from the company’s entire network of 45 cities worldwide.

This comprehensive feed provides a simple way for readers to view all of Metroblogging’s current articles and images without having to visit nearly 50 individual sites. Additionally, the ease of finding content in one place contributes further to Metblog’s goal of providing intimate looks at the local on a global scale - and showing city dwellers how much they have in common.

Right now, for instance, the Metroblogging feed is carrying on-the-spot news and opinion on the rioting in Paris, a solar eclipse in Karachi, street-drug advertising in NYC and trend-surfing cosplay in Tokyo.

http://feeds.metroblogging.com/allcities.xml

With 45 active sites, Metroblogging is the largest and fastest growing network of city-specific blogs on the Web. From San Francisco to Bangkok, from Karachi to Toronto, Metblogs are a hyper-local look at what’s going on in the great cities of the world. A hand-picked core of regional bloggers give each site a new perspective on daily life; less calendar listings, more friendly advice.

With Metblogs, you can read about life and times in your neighborhood, your favorite places to visit, places where you’ve never been, or get a feel for them all with the daily “best of” blog on the hub at Metroblogging.com.

Metroblogging is owned and developed by Bode Media and was selected in Forbes Magazine’s Best of the Web, 2005 in the “City Blogs” category.

Portal: http://metroblogging.com
Global feed: http://feeds.metroblogging.com/allcities.xml

CONTACT:
Sean Bonner
Bode Media
[email protected]
816-885-9750

Back in January Jason announced that he was leaving Technorati to focus on Metroblogging and I said I’d be following shortly. Basically we had way too much Metblogs work to do and not enough time to do it. The past month has been filled with that and we’re excited to show off the first chunk of a long line of new stuff - a full redesign of the Metroblogging network city sites. I could tell you all about it (actually I will) but you should go check it out first. Take a look at our first city, Los Angeles, or our newest city Dublin. Or if you want something closer, check out any one of the 42+ others we have around the world.

Since just about every detail on the sites have been messed with, and it would take a research paper to explain them all, I’m just going to point out a few of my favorites. The most obvious change is the color shift. With so many of our authors posting amazing images (we felt that the previous page design was overpowering them in many cases), the new mostly grey-scale sites will now really help keep the focus on those images. Also, knowing people are coming to our sites for the content, we’ve made the posts themselves easier to read. All that said, one thing I’ve learned from designing websites for 10+ years is that no matter what you do, someone will hate it. So design-wise, this is all I’m gonna say. We love it, and hope you do to (if not we’ve set up [email protected] where you can send your “advice” to).

In regards to features - check out that line of icons under the posts. There are a bunch of new options there which will make sorting, finding, and keeping track of things much easier. With a growing audience whose primary language is not English, we hope the icons will help make figuring out how to do those things much easier as well. We also decided that a lot of the navigation options were simply taking up space so we tucked them away into those little pop-open slots on the right side of the screen. If you want it, it’s there - if not, you don’t have to look at it. Additionally, we have moved the flickr group photos to the right side and we are in the process of opening all those groups up for public contributions. That should be finished later this week.

One new feature in the navigation that I do want to highlight is the mobile versions of all of the city sites. We’ve been working with the fine folks over at WINKsite to put together a full-blown mobile version of our entire network. There’s a desktop emulator link so you can see how it looks from your computer or you can just fire up a mobile browser and head over to http://cityname.metblogs.com/mobile/ and check it out on your phone. With any luck your days of being bored waiting in line are now over.

Anyway, what I’ve just mentioned is the tip of the iceberg - Metblogs has more on the way. Stay tuned, as I said last month, things are about to get really exciting.

If you are here and I didn’t send you this link, you are a sneaking snooper! Knock it off! This should be no surprise though, we’re a blog company, of course we’re going to have a company blog. But it’s still being built, so go the heck away and forget you ever saw this place - at least ’til we announce it. kthnxbye.

Update February 2006: nevermind, we’re about to announce it so w00t!