A small start-up named Google announced yesterday that they are now presenting local news. You might not have heard of this company yet, but I've been told they have a pretty good search engine.
In all seriousness, Google getting into local news is certainly a wake up call (as if we needed one) for local news aggregators like YourStreet. Is it time to panic? Not quite, and here's why:
- News is big - really big. According to Nielsen Online, there's an audience of about 100 million people for news. Google News currently gets around 10 million users a month, so they have about 10% of the news market - quite different from the 65%+ share Google owns of the search market. Also according to Nielsen, there are 20 news websites with 5 million or more visitors per month - that's a lot! Clearly, there's room in the market for many companies to do well, each with a different focus or way of presenting the news. Unlike search, it's much more difficult to have a one-size-fits all solution when it comes to news. Some folks are going to want a broad focus on national or international news, others will want a hyper local news experience.
- No one has nailed local news. Many commentators have remarked that there are problems with all aggregators of local news, including Google. Creating an engaging, compelling user experience and a reason to return to the site on a regular basis are the keys for any local news aggregator (and for that matter any website in general). At YourStreet, this is something we're really focused on and I'll freely admit we're not all the way there yet, and neither is anyone else. YourStreet, Google, Topix, Outside.in, and EveryBlock are all taking different directions on how to present local news and it's far from clear which way is the best, or even if there is one best way of doing it.
- If you're going to go local, get really local. Google now gives you news at the city and zip code levels (although as far as I can see, news for zip codes is associated with the nearest city, not the actual area of the zip code). From the start, YourStreet has believed strongly that to truly fulfill the promise of "hyperlocal", you have to bring information right down to the street level. One of the most powerful features of YourStreet is being able to zoom the map all the way down to your block to see exactly what's going on in your immediate environment. Associating news with a city or even a zip code is helpful, but to really harness the power of presenting news online, you have to get down to the neighborhood and even street level.
Google's move into local news certainly validates this space. But it's much too early to declare a winner (or more likely, winners) - in fact, we're all just getting started. So welcome to the neighborhood Google!
James Nicholson
Founder/CEO
