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Hyperlocal site mothballed after failing to find buyer

A hyperlocal website which failed to attract a buyer on eBay has now been mothballed after 10 years of publication.

Birmingham site www.birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk is no longer being updated by founder and owner Jon Bounds, who is now involved with another local online project.

He has joined forces with Jon Hickman to work for Paradise Circus, a website which aims to “write, film, photograph, draw, make and record things about Birmingham”.

Jon put his original site up for sale on eBay in October but only received one bid of £500, which turned out not to be genuine after he received no response from the bidder.

He said he wanted to move in a new direction, away from people sending him press releases about things which were not interesting to him.

Writing on the Paradise Circus site, Jon said: “Once upon a time there was Birmingham: It’s Not Shit. It was a place that reacted against how the local media treated the city, it tried to show the place without polish.

“People liked it, so they sent in things and to be nice we posted lots of them. But that sort of muddied the waters, and then something happened. So we’re going for a fresh start.”

He told HTFP: “This is more of a reboot – if someone else was rebooting, they may have wanted the name and reputation to do more journalistic things with the site, my reboot was to release the pressure to do that sort of thing. ‘Hyperlocal’ as an industry is just not fun enough now.”

www.birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk  described itself as “mildly satirical” and aimed to show the positive side of the city.

Its range of favourite topics included Birmingham’s people, arts, animals, buildings, parks, grass verges, factories and bus stops, while it also ran a Brummie of the Year Award and an annual Talk Like a Brummie Day.

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  • January 10, 2013 at 2:29 pm
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    Sadly the fate of all hyperlocal self publishing sites once time, money and … reality break in. There is no intrinsic value as the person themselves ‘is’ the website.

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