yelvington.com

Jeff Jarvis observes that hyperlocal is about people, not the tools used to connect those people. This is exactly right. I've been using the example of Robin Dunbar's number to explain this to newspaperfolk for some time.

For most people the little circle of 150 close friends and relatives is still primarily geographically local, and it's a circle that conventional media serves poorly if at all. The Web gives us some great new tools for penetrating that circle, but we shouldn't confuse our tools with our purposes.

It occurs to me that there's another shift that needs examination, and that's about the constructive social role played by media, whether it be yours, mine, or ours. I am still seeing a tendency to launch "hyperlocal community" websites with little attention being paid to the interpersonal processes of real community.

It's not enough to get people blogging or uploading news stories or whatever. The real goal needs to be social capital formation that is external to the website, and it's entirely appropriate to be using tools other than the Web to reach that goal. Those tools include physical-space meetings and in-person processes, and print-related components.