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Future looks bright for successful hyperlocal website

A hyperlocal website in London created 12 years ago is nearing 15,000 subscribers to its weekly newsletter.

ChiswickW4.com was launched by Neighbour Net in 2000 to cover a single post code district of London.

There are now nine similar sites in other areas of West and South West London and the group has over 35,000 registered members.

The site is edited by Anne Flaherty who was formerly a journalist in Ireland writing for the Irish Press and the Irish Times before moving to Chiswick.

Said Anne: “Unsurprisingly, celebrity themed stories are very popular as well as property related items and coverage of restaurants but items about local issues such as planning are not far behind.

“This week a story about a campaign to save a local nature reserve from being overwhelmed by development is one of the most popular. People like reading news they are helping to make.”

During January 2012 there were more than 50,000 unique users of the Chiswick site which exceeded the previous best seen during the August riots.

The area was formerly served by newspapers the Brentford, Chiswick and Isleworth Times, and later The Chiswick, both of which have now closed.

Added Anne: “Neighbour Net now has a network of similar sites and is seeing strong revenue and traffic growth in areas of London like Putney, Ealing and Acton.”

A new content management system will be implemented which will dispense with the need for third party software and allow more direct contributions to the site.

As many as ten new sites will be launched once the upgrade has taken place.

 

3 comments

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  • March 5, 2012 at 2:29 pm
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    Subscribers? So how much is the subscription? Or is it just the 15,000 people who signed up to receive it gratis?

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  • March 5, 2012 at 2:47 pm
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    Nice effort, but aside from figures, once you start getting a ‘network’ you start getting into the realms of a group. It’s like the big media organisations all over again, losing personality and standardising everything. Still strongly believe that the best way for these sites to succeed is by a very small group of people living and breathing their site and totally focusing on their area. Great example is http://www.hu17.net. Not a hard news site, but a brilliant example of how to get right into the consciousness of a community

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