[Digital-Mentor] CN Group boosts hyperlocal websites

[MJ Ray]

"David Wilcox" <david at socialreporter.com> wrote:
> Is the issue how to retain control of your personal, community content
> while getting benefit/traffic from national/regional infrastructures?
>
> Some discussion of that in relation to the Localmouth system
> http://socialreporter.com/?p=383

I think that's a key issue.  The BBC has been criticised in the past
for failing to link out enough, but I've not seen much change yet.
Even wikipedia insults community sites as not reputable enough to cite,
while the tiniest tinpot tabloid is reputable (and a few spoof sites
have been cited, too).

I don't understand how that socialreporter.com discussion relates to
this.  Localmouth seems like another "all your community are belong to
us" effort, which clearly tells me "do not use our website" unless I
agree to them claiming "intellectual property rights" over anything I
put in.  Seems a bit over-zealous.

There was link to groupsnearyou.com (which points people to Big Media
again, but does at least offer a simple "add" link) but I can't add
our local community's web forum to it.  Clicking "Area covered >>"
just displays the same form again, but cleared of my data. I guess it
has hidden browser requirements, like so many anti-social social
sites.

I feel we'd do better to add sites to distributed systems like ODP
http://dmoz.org/ and http://geourl.org/ and encourage other websites
(including the media companies) to use them.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237