Placeblogger brings blog searches hyperlocal

by mediarevolutionary | January 4, 2007 at 09:11 pm
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Podcasting at Bryght

Podcasting at Bryght

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Lisa Williams, PressThink and The Center for Citizen Media are three presenters of Placeblogger, layering geography over the Net.  This site - touting 700 blogs currently in its database - uses Drupal technology and innovation to place the bloggers, and connect readers interested in their local.
In What’s a Placeblog? Lisa writes:

    Placeblogs are sometimes called “hyperlocal sites” because some of them focus on news events and items that cover a particular neighborhood in great detail — and in particular, places that might be too physically small or sparsely populated to attract much traditional media coverage. Because of this, many people have associated them with the term “citizen journalism,” or journalism done by non-journalists.

    Placeblogs, however, are about something broader than news alone. They’re about the lived experience of a place. That experience may be news, or it may simply be about that part of our lives that isn’t news but creates the texture of our daily lives: our commute, where we eat, conversations with our neighbors, the irritations and delights of living in a particular place among particular people. However, when news happens in a community, placeblogs often cover those events in unique and nontraditional ways…


Testing the sites motivation to let the surfer, "discover, browse and subscribe to local blogs," I found the site well organized and easy to use.  I was happy to see that my area had blogs I hadn't ever heard of and resources I can use locally. 

I connected with a couple of bloggers locally, and we all seem to agree that layering a geography on the Net has amazing potential: networking, collaborating, activism, organizing.  Blogging allows us to think globally, and Placeblogger helps us act locally.

See Jay Rosen's article on Placeblogger

See Lisa explain Placeblogger at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard

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