Mapping News

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The entries for the Boston neighborhood known as Union Square provide some insight into the challenges faced by both YourStreet and Outside.in. YourStreet's algorithms did filter out all the stories about the famous Union Squares in New York and San Francisco. But there was a story about the Union Square in Somerville, a city located very close to Boston. Outside.in, on the other hand, included only posts that were relevant to Union Square in Boston, but it didn't provide as broad a range of fresh material as YourStreet did.

Dan Gillmor, director of the Center for Citizen Media, says that companies are still figuring out how to provide hyper-local news properly. "YourStreet's approach of combining aggregation with content creation seems promising," he says. However, he notes that YourStreet faces heavy competition from other geographically focused sites, which run the gamut from Google Earth, to the do-it-yourself atlas site Platial, to the local-news service Topix.

Nicholson says that YourStreet will add a few features in the near future. In about a month, the site will launch an algorithm that compiles statistics on which stories are more interesting to users and brings those stories to the top. The site will also launch a widget that bloggers can use to paste information from YourStreet onto their sites. More far-off plans include the launch of a tool kit that developers can use to integrate with YourStreet, and a system that would allow users to classify stories by subject matter. The company plans to make money through targeted advertising.