HoodFind^TM

It wasn’t very long ago, say pre-2003, that local search was limited to finding, let’s say a dry-cleaner, “within 5 miles from your zip code”. Well, we all know that if you live in a city, a 5 mile radius might as well include Kazakhstan. In other words, the relevancy of search results as it applied to your immediate surroundings was less than ideal. Once the big search companies started to integrate mapping technology into search results, you were finally able to see a much closer radius of results for yellow-page style listings, making local search on the web dramatically more useful. However, truly meaningful content for local information was still largely lacking. The problem was that there were few tools on the web that offered a real platform to capture and organize community content and involvement.

The big breakthrough in local search came in early 2005. This is when the search giants, starting with Google, began to release their mapping technology for free to the software development community through APIs. For the first time, this allowed developers to easily embed map technology into their websites, resulting in the birth of many creative uses of maps, often called “map mashups”, some of which allowed for user-generated content. And therein lays the transition point into hyperlocal: content that is mostly provided by the community, but organized nicely by the institution (largely through mapping).

Now we are beginning phase two of hyperlocal; the mapping of not just static local information, but dynamic information as well. Imagine if schoolchildren could go to a website to track the movements of the Good Humor ice cream man and also see if he has enough Astropops in his cooler for the kickball game…now that’s hyperlocal. Real-world, less ridiculous examples you ask? Both the LA Times and KPBS San Diego are currently using Google maps on their websites so that readers can track the status of the wildfires that have been ravaging so many of their communities this past week.

Other examples that map dynamic content are Zillow for real-estate, Twitter for micro-blogging, and of course HoodFind for local “finds”.

So, if all of this hyperlocal talk sounds exciting, even sexy, it’s because it is. And if you think it’s progressing at warp speed….it’s because it is.