Hyperloko Content on CBSLocal.com
WCCO’s new site at minnesota.cbslocal.com has neighborhood pages, including this one for Longfellow.
Is CBS hopping on the hyperlocal train?
Mashing up APIs?
Going Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0)?
Syndicating RSS?
Call it what you will, but in practice, it’s not fit for hyperlocal consumption. They appear to be pulling content from sources including Outside.in, who tries to aggregate content from across the web that’s relevant to narrower geographies than metro areas. And, in some cases, they get it right, like the syndication of a nugget from Brian’s blog about a recycling program Longfellow.
The signal to noise ratio is rather hosed at this point.
I see this in real estate as well. Boardroom conversations get across the concept that “content is king” which leads to a quick conversation about “how can get get more content” with little thought going into the quality of that content or the user experience.
Let’s face it: It’s easier to automate crap than to curate quality. There is no way that someone would look at the Longfellow Neighborhood page as it exists today and say, “we’re providing a quality news experience to people interested in Longfellow.”
November 11th, 2010 at 10:41 am
The Powderhorn page isn’t any better…
November 11th, 2010 at 10:51 am
I am getting a couple of visits from Apple Valley’s page but honestly the content being pushed to their readers isn’t exactly stellar. Not enough time has passed for me to determine if this is a viable source of repeat visitors but I have a feeling it won’t do much to enrich my userbase. With that in mind you have to wonder why kind of experience it’s providing for CBS’ users. Why bother to spend the time if it’s not going to drive useful content?
November 11th, 2010 at 11:35 am
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November 11th, 2010 at 11:55 am
@Bill, a cynical perspective might be that the content’s quantity may help scoop up some search traffic while the quality will make the ads look good.
November 11th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
If they really want to bring in great hyper local news, they better stop pulling info from my site
November 14th, 2010 at 11:22 am
http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m279/rlibson/?action=view¤t=Picture1.png
come on Ed did you watch my Vyou response?….Local is the future.
This is a pure SEO play to grab eyeballs, we’ll have to see what they do with it but I think pageviews are still a widely used metric for mainstream media buyers.
November 14th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
@ryan l, while the future may be local, I’d like to think that winning local content will provide value to locals. At this point, the signal to noise ratio is out of whack on cbslocal.com. That said, if the site has a high enough link popularity, it will manage to sweep up traffic. If the content is marginal, the ads may seem more interesting than the content they’re aggregating.
November 15th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Creating local content is expensive, heck even manually curating local content is expensive.
But re-formatting content which already exists is not too pricey. Perhaps if they see enough revenue they’ll either add a curator or throw some money at developing a better algorithm.
Really just an attempt to unlock value in content.
I agree at this point it is simply re purposing existing content in a MFDA (made for display ad) format.