One recent trend noticed in the blogosphere is how users are preferring local blog posts, information, and news, over sites that are more national and global in perspective (that is, some New York Post reporter’s blog as opposed to a blogger who only discusses issues relevant to a region, city, or town).
There is one location-based news distribution service called Fwix that has focused on this trend, and they’ll certainly start doing it better with the recent $2.75 million in funding they received from BlueRun Ventures. Others see the value in this trend and are putting their money where the winds are shifting (the paradigms too).
Fwix aggregates news articles and blog posts and distributes stories that are relevant to specific locales in more 80 North American cities. Its shtick is a proprietary algorithm that identifies place names, topics and happenings that users in a region or city might be interested in.
Fwix is truly digitally democratic in that it treats all sources of news as equal — blog entries are given equal weight with missives from major news outlets. So: your neighbor’s blog about health care is deemed just as newsworthy as Bill O’Reilly’s latest blog rant on the same topic. The more active the local blogging community, the richer the local site. There is also a Google Trends-like tool that identifies local hot topics.
This is the future of information dissemination, where we all become as important a thinker as anyone else. What are you waiting for? Think no one’s going to care about your opinions over Larry King’s? Think again.