Home Owners Associations would seem like natural publishers of hyperlocal news and information – especially where “many residents’ sense of community rarely extends beyond their own subdivisions, neighborhood schools and the crime and traffic problems closest to their homes,” as The Washington Post noted last week in an article on the failure of country-wide hyperlocal projects (including its own).
The Post reports, for instance, that many residents of the mega- “Broadlands” HOA are “hooked” on it, as well an on an independent site called the Brambletonian. The latter says it receives 7,000 monthly visitors. Both offer shopping and dining directories, resident forums, and community calendars for the swim team, etc
Despite their potential, our experience with home owners associations as publishers has been challenging and we haven’t been able to consider them as possible partners for local publishers. Either they self-publish, with primitive results, or they rely on a handful of HOA-specific vendors who charge on a per-resident basis. These are often managed outside of the community by companies that aren’t media-savvy and don’t sell much, if any, advertising — in part, because the majority of HOAs are too fragmented. They also don’t receive regular input from their members, and don’t have real editorial resources.
There are probably some good HOA sites, however. Companies such as eneighbors.com have worked to create a third party involvement with associations. Its sponsored ads on Google read: “I switched because no one visited our HOA website.”
This all reminds me of an informal review I did a few years ago (as Backfence got started) of neighborhood email lists around Washington. The % of residents who spend time online always seemed satisfied with whatever their neighbors were posting in that simple format. That is no doubt still the case. And if the neighborhood lacks a list; seems to be of little matter.
The WaPost and others could do worse than to publish in the paper (with approval from list managers) the top items from the local email lists that do exist within the region. “Zone” it WebRegion and sell 1/4-pages to BestBuy.
WaPost is giving very high visibility to tweets from Redskin fans — across the top of football coverage pages. That’s a good example of UGC re-purposed for print in context. Should be similar local themes out there, if less crazed than what comes out of NFL fandom.