Hyperlocal

"Hyperlocal" (also written "hyper-local") is an adjective used to describe something as being "limited to a very small geographical area", and in particular, to anything "[e]xtremely or excessively local". It is applied in particular with regard to media output aimed at narrowly focused populations. It has otherwise been described as "information oriented around a well-defined community with its primary focus directed toward the concerns of the population in that community". The term can also be used as a noun in isolation, where it has been described as referring to "the emergent ecology of data (including textual content), aggregators, publication mechanism and user interactions and behaviors which centre on a resident of a location and the business of being a resident". More recently, the term hyperlocal has applied to uses of GPS technologies in the function of mobile device applications.

The term may have originated in 1921 in a small U.S. newspaper, in a description of trends in Central American national politics, reemerging perhaps with the 1989 The Washington Post description as "so-called hyperlocal", the aim for "tiny markets of 50,000 or less" by television cable news. The concept as applied to news, readily adopted in the Web 2.0 explosion of startup web-based news efforts, has subsequently gone through practical iterations with regard to its business application, as it has moved to refine its itself via the focus and aims of each enterprise (from competing in search space, to social networking, to news reporting).

Coinage and definitions

"Hyperlocal" may have first appeared in 1921 in the adjectival description of a trend in the politics of some Central American nations, in a small Ohio newspaper.

Later in 20th century, it appeared in The Washington Post, being defined in 1989 in terms of "tiny markets of 50,000 or less" for television cable news, where the term hyperlocal was preceded by "so-called". The term appeared as "hyper-local" in a March 11, 1991 reference to viewer-tailoring of cable news content of a station in the Washington, D.C. area to give it slants, via "shorter [additional] news reports", that would make it attractive to viewers not just of the District of Columbia but also to additional viewers in suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia in a way that the article's author, Paul Farhi, described as "taking local coverage to the limit".