In a July 16, 2007 column on the PBS MediaShift website, co-founder Mark Potts gives provides an inside look at why the Backfence series of hyperlocal websites closed down. Potts column appeared on the same day that the Washington Post launched LoudounExtra, another attempt at making the hyperlocal idea work online on both user interest and financial feasibility levels.Potts writes:There has been a lot of speculation about what went wrong at Backfence. To date, the company’s investors and I have tried to stay out of the second-guessing in the blogosphere and the trade press, largely because there are private business matters involved that we’ve chosen not to discuss.Indeed, as with many early-stage companies, some of Backfence’s problems were internal and self-inflicted, and actually had little or nothing to do with the many reasons wildly speculated about in industry blogs and in the trade press in recent days.However, as Backfence’s co-founder, I thought it would be helpful to discuss some of what we learned from Backfence — and why I’m still very optimistic that a similar model can and will succeed. As a pioneer in the user-generated, hyper-local field, Backfence hopefully will pave the way for many other efforts to create locally focused online communities that ultimately will become profitable businesses.Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the appearance of a large number of different variations and models for creating and operating user-generated, citizens media or hyper-local sites. Steve Outing wrote an excellent essay in 2005 on the 11 layers of citizen journalism —there surely are more by now. Plus, there is an excellent recent overview of citizens media by Jan Schaffer and the University of Maryland’s J-Lab. What’s Essential for SuccessLike Backfence, all of these nascent efforts are fascinating laboratories — and also like Backfence, none has yet proven to be a successful, sustainable long-term business model. So it’s difficult at this juncture to say what’s “right” and what’s “wrong.” But based on the Backfence experience, here are are a few things I believe are essential for the success of a user-generated hyper-local site:> Engage the community. > It’s not journalism — it’s a conversation. > Hyperlocal content is really mundane. > Trust the audience. > Focus on strong, well-defined communities. > Leverage social networking. > There is most certainly a robust hyper-local advertising business. > Keep costs down. > Partner with a media company or some other distribution source. > Hyper-local works. > Hyper-local is really hard. Potts goes into detail about each of the above points and argues that the citizen media concept is a sound one that has a future. Click here for Potts' column in its entirety on the MediaShift website.