Backfence.com looks rickety

Dan Gillmor's out from under the costs of operating the limping Bayosphere.com and Backfence.org announced it's gone bi-coastal.  The two "hyperlocal" news Web sites are now a coast-to-coast network.

From Gillmor's sayonara, it sounds like he threw the keys to Backfence's founders, Susan DeFife and Mark Potts.  DeFife and Potts are terrific people.  She's a successful entrepreneur, he's a savvy, experienced and talented journalist.  Gillmor - well, even he agrees that a college professor-type is no one to run a business.

So while Backfence and Gillmor's Bayosphere march on, where's the proof anybody cares?  Backfence.com's audience doesn't seem to. 

Backfence launched its first two sites in Reston and McLean, Va. two years ago.  Of six items on the Reston home page this morning, only one was fresh.  And it's a community calendar item, probably pushed up from a behind-the-scenes database. Of the five others, one is two days old, three are three days old, and one is seven days old. It's an "e-news" report from a Virginia state delegate. Yawn!

On the McLean site, same story. The lead item was posted yesterday by a county supervisor with the gripping headline, "What is a Mandate and How Does it Affect My Tax Rate?"  Again, there are three- and four-day old items, including one that's more than two weeks old, and it's a positive "review" of a ReMax real estate agent posted by "localdiva."

The four Washington-area sites have an audience of only 30,000 visitors a month.  Gillmor's unfocused Bayosphere claims 100,000.

Backfence and many of the other "hyperlocal" efforts are idealistically attractive.  Some may even succeed, like Colorado's Your Hub.com. (Business Week's Heather Green did a nice interview with the managing editor.)

Your Hub has backing from two market-dominating newspapers, the Denver PoSt and Rocky Mountain News.  Weblogs Inc.'s new Blogging Ohio.com  looks like a pilot fish for an AOL-backed network of community sites, and which has the advantage of being able to draw on the resources of 37 City Guides.  These are ventures which can afford to experiment.

But DeFife and Potts are alone.  Their VC money may be running out after 16 months.  There are no deep pockets, or strong brands, with which to ally or on which to rely. The addition of Merrill Brown to the board of directors, however, may signify some new cash has been found from his MM Media investment firm.

Chances are DeFife and Potts have already offered their publishing tools and network services to local media in exchange for partnering.  They need to keep trying, to get off the fence and onto solid ground.

Comments

[Dave Connell]

I live in Reston and receive the Backfence enewsletter and look at it a bit. Ive even posted some stuff on there, although not recently. The major problem with teh site seems to be a lack of pre-populated, edited content. Those runnning the site are relying too much on the community to fill its pages, and it ends up with irrelevancies like a top dining spots list that includes Chicken Out and other chains. I want to find information from these sites quickly, and not necessarily supply it. Who has time for that.

Another problem is Restons established free weeklies that essentially supply the same service, delivered to your door, and are well established. Backfence should have partnered with one of these papers--say the Reston Times--leveraged their existing brand and content then provided the technical infrastructure of the "community site" that they're providing now.