The site’s content is also built around emails — scores of continually fresh ones that point out neighborhood hazards, offer concert tickets for sale, do grassroots politicking, etc., etc. Of course, both Chevy Chase and Cleveland Park are very settled neighborhoods, so there’s a strong community base to tap into with a hyperlocal site.

Earlier this year for my own edification I looked at how a specific neighborhood keeps itself informed via online connections. it is the area of Washington called Chevy Chase DC, stradding Connecticut Ave. running up to the Maryland line at Western Ave., bordered roughly by Rock Creek Park and Friendship Heights. The format was a simple mailing list. In the two weeks I was a member, there were a couple hundred emails sent by several dozen individuals. They warned people to watch out for the guy selling bad meat door to door on McKinley St., and to avoid the well dressed, but panhandling woman at the Metro, among about 40 other subjects that were then active. Two weeks.

These residents are all highly educated, have a lot of money and enjoy the latest broadband gizmos. I don’t know if they frequent other local DC-based sites. But for tracking the stuff of their neighborhood, this list would be hard to beat. This kind of community self-informing is what Backfence and others are trying to create platforms for and business models to support.

As Peter and his readers have noted here, the SMEs that local community sites will ultimately depend on for financial success (to say nothing of paying staffs), have been exceedingly slow to adopt the web. And according to pals in the search optimization business, when they do get into it, is often just to get a top ranking in organic search results listings.