Hyperlocal Lessons

Mark Potts has written up the lessons he learnt from the boom-and-bust of the $3m hyperlocal community site Backfence.  It's familiar stuff but has the extra potency of first-hand pain!  "You don’t necessarily have to pay community members to contribute to and participate on the sites. That’s not their primary motivation. They want to be seen among their neighbors as sources of local knowledge and opinion, and that’s more valuable to them than being paid. Indeed, we never had a single member ask for compensation—and when we offered coffee cards in exchange for posts, Backfence users actually rebelled."  Potts also points at the rise of social networks as attractive alternatives to centralised offerings.  This is strikingly relevant through a quick search on FB for Hackney, my local district, which returns 197 groups and one for a local pub that has 112 members!