Hyperlocal

Hyperlocal connotes information oriented around a well-defined community with its primary focus directed toward the concerns of the population in that community. The term can be used as a noun in isolation or as a modifier of some other term (e.g. news). When used in isolation it refers to the emergent ecology of data (including textual content), aggregators, publication mechanism and user interactions and behaviors which centre on a resident of a location and the business of being a resident. More recently, the term hyperlocal has become synonymous with the combined use of applications on mobile devices and GPS technology. Use of the term originated in 1991, in reference to local television news content.

A working definition of hyperlocal was published in a 2012 Nesta report, describing it as "online news or content services pertaining to a town, village, single postcode or other small, geographically defined community".

Hyperlocal content has two major dimensions: geography and time. The dimensions are measures of the relevance or value perceived by the content consumer in time and space. The higher the content scores on these dimensions the more relevant the content becomes to the individual and the less it becomes to the masses. Hyperlocal content is targeted at or consumed by people or entities that are located within a well defined area, generally on the scale of a street, neighborhood, community or city. Hyperlocal content must also be relevant in time. The nature of the evolution of hyperlocal content follows these two dimensions. By combining the two dimensions we can identify types of hyperlocal content throughout history. In the distant past, hyperlocal content was low on the geographic dimension, meaning that the content met only broad needs of larger populations across bigger areas, and also low on the time dimension: relevance was perceived over long timescales. Examples include almanacs, town criers and written postings or other similar forms of infrequent content delivery mechanisms. More recent hyperlocal content scores higher on the geographic and time dimensions because it delivers more diverse content that targets geographic areas and remains relevant at much smaller time scales such as days and weeks not months and years. Recent examples of hyperlocal delivery mechanisms include neighborhood focused news sources, neighborhood voucher packs and neighborhood websites. More recently, hyperlocal content has evolved to include GPS enabled internet integrated mobile applications which score highly on both the geographic and the time dimensions. They are capable of delivering content that is relevant not just in a community but relevant right down to the individual within a geographic area that can be measured in meters and blocks not towns and neighborhoods. They are also capable of delivering content relevant at very short timescales such as seconds or minutes not just days or weeks.

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