Comments on: Yahoo! News and the big, bad buyout http://www.thehyperlocalist.com/2010/05/19/yahoo-news-and-the-big-badbuyout/ Debunking the news business one neighborhood at a time. Tue, 15 Feb 2011 18:54:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: TR http://www.thehyperlocalist.com/2010/05/19/yahoo-news-and-the-big-badbuyout/comment-page-1/#comment-196 TR Fri, 21 May 2010 06:56:23 +0000 http://www.thehyperlocalist.com/?p=412#comment-196 What laughable BS if someone thinks buying into a "content farm" is going to equal local online success. You really do have to get down and on the ground in the 'hood - even getting closer than a content farm isn't good enough - there is a company working with a local broadcasting company here (I do not care to name any of them) to launch dozens of faux "neighborhood blogs" in various markets. We had that momentary flurry of panic here among the bonafide neighborhood journalists - and very quickly, it was clear they were no threat. They have a couple of producers assigned to tend dozens of sites, which means they do little more than post calendar entries (and rehash of whatever the real local sites just did two hours earlier), while the partner company pays for a boiler room to hound local businesses about advertising. A few have fallen for it. And after their contracts ran out, they went running to *real* neighborhood websites. (Although sadly, when you don't get results because you advertise on a website nobody is reading, you also may feel so burned you avoid online advertising for a while - and that is where these farmed sites are doing real damage, though the same damage can be done by an indie who sells ads before she/he has an audience to show those ads to.) Anyway, thanks for writing about this because I hadn't heard of it (way too head down in my own local newsosphere) before seeing it on your site. What laughable BS if someone thinks buying into a “content farm” is going to equal local online success. You really do have to get down and on the ground in the ‘hood – even getting closer than a content farm isn’t good enough – there is a company working with a local broadcasting company here (I do not care to name any of them) to launch dozens of faux “neighborhood blogs” in various markets. We had that momentary flurry of panic here among the bonafide neighborhood journalists – and very quickly, it was clear they were no threat. They have a couple of producers assigned to tend dozens of sites, which means they do little more than post calendar entries (and rehash of whatever the real local sites just did two hours earlier), while the partner company pays for a boiler room to hound local businesses about advertising. A few have fallen for it. And after their contracts ran out, they went running to *real* neighborhood websites. (Although sadly, when you don’t get results because you advertise on a website nobody is reading, you also may feel so burned you avoid online advertising for a while – and that is where these farmed sites are doing real damage, though the same damage can be done by an indie who sells ads before she/he has an audience to show those ads to.)

Anyway, thanks for writing about this because I hadn’t heard of it (way too head down in my own local newsosphere) before seeing it on your site.

]]> By: SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 19, 2010 http://www.thehyperlocalist.com/2010/05/19/yahoo-news-and-the-big-badbuyout/comment-page-1/#comment-183 SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 19, 2010 Wed, 19 May 2010 21:17:28 +0000 http://www.thehyperlocalist.com/?p=412#comment-183 [...] Yahoo! News and the Big, Bad Buyout, www.thehyperlocalist.com [...] [...] Yahoo! News and the Big, Bad Buyout, http://www.thehyperlocalist.com [...]

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