Andy Mitchell

Northpack - a geographic community based blog aggregator for the North of England - is proving that local opinion is a powerful attraction, flying in the face of the zeitgeist that “global is good”.

To clarify, local is also in vogue, but only where it directly represents ‘things’ - Craigslist for exchange and jobs, Yell/Yelp for local listings. I don’t want to generalise too greatly, but there is a trend - especially amongst libertarian-orientated geeks - to eschew national borders where possible. Nowhere is this more greatly felt than the exchange of ideas. The notion that someone should restrict communication to something so arbitary as where you happen to live is, on the surface, almost offensive.

So, when Northpack sprang up in my neck of the woods, I saw that the idea would help create a sense of community, but I didn’t actually think it would be interesting. In other words, I supported the idea but wasn’t particularly excited about the reality. Over the last few weeks, I’ve felt increasingly compelled to blog about this new sensation: I’m drawn to checking Northpack whenever I check Techmeme (the day’s global cream of news stories), the micro with the macro.

Why is Northpack compelling to me? Is it that we’ve hit upon some previously unknown seam of talent? Frankly, no (and I include myself in that). Then where is the draw of a local blog aggregator?

• Most importantly, there is a sense you can reach out and touch the author. We might never otherwise cross paths at an event, or I might never find out where our shared viewpoints over a short chat, but blogs give us a greater opportunity to understand who someone is. What matters is that I can then intentionally seek that person out at the next event. And even more importantly, there isn’t the sense that you’re hassling them (like, say, if you were to approach Mike Arrington), because they’re local, they’re like you.
• Your voice can be heard. Blogs are heavily subject to the power law curve, where the top 1% of blogs get all the traffic. First, with an aggregator you’re only as good as your next headline, so everyone has equal chance. Second, you’re not competing against the profilic output of the commercial blogs; you don’t need to fight (too hard) to be seen. This all culminates in a sense of community. Previously, your blog might not have got traffic, but now you’re participating and conversing with people you either know or could easily meet.
• Finally, you can get a sense of important issues to those around you. Similar to Twitter, you can passively intake hot topics from the headlines that float passed you. This can be the basis for future conversations, either in your own output or flowing back into the events you attend.

What kind of blog posts work? This is likely to be the most personal aspect of this post. For me, I’m not so interested in reading generic general guides (e.g. CSS techniques, IE tips) - I generally go to the source with the global reputation for that. I do enjoy the opinion of my peers on global issues, I like posts that are truly unique to things in the region, and as an extension to that, I like to hear about personal & business successes (and failures if properly reported) in the region - because somehow that is more empowering.

Why does it need a specific aggregator? Why not just meet people and add their blog to your reader?
Because time is precious. The local reading list is probably not on par with the globally-competitive output you subscribe too. I’ve certainly never felt compelled to check out someone’s blog, even if it’s on their business card. And, I don’t want the overhead of discerning what is local and what is global when I’m scanning my Google Reader. Finally, I don’t want the burden of manually adding people’s blogs. I like my local output to be self-contained and self-managing, so I can dip into it when I feel like it.

I also love the idea that I could travel around the country (or the world), and ‘dip into’ different communities as I arrive in them. So I could go into leedspack, then birminghampack, then brightonpack, etc., picking up a sense of the community I’ve just entered, and discovering the people to make my first introductions to.

===

By intent or by accident, Northpack has - and is the first to my knowledge to do so - shown that a local blog aggregator is an important concept in its own right. I hope the Northpack people seize the opportunity.

(I went to elaborate on what I like and what I’d like to see in a new post, Forget Social Networks, I want a Community Network)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Site.