YourStreet Hits Road Block and Dumps Maps

The hyperlocal news website, YourStreet.com, has discontinued the use of maps. Citing costs, an email from the company stated, "Supporting mapping of each article was just too expensive to maintain, but rest assured that you’ll continue to find the latest local news for your city or town on YourStreet.  As an added bonus, you’ll find the pages load much faster than before."

I used to cite YourStreet as one of the more progessive users of hyperlocal news whenever giving presentations. Stories would be associated on a map using Google Maps as the platform and MetaCarta as a supporting tool to further refine the location of community-contributed news. Other changes to the website included the discontinuation of "profiles" whereby the company now understands that "pretty much everyone has a Facebook profile and it no longer makes sense to force users to maintain separate profiles on each site they join.  So YourStreet now integrates with your Facebook profile."

I suppose this is just a sign that social networking and hyperlocal news are colliding. Soon, I expect to see the inclusion of Twitter on hyperlocal news sites that is geolocated. Geofollow is one such user on Twitter just trying to put a location with a Twitter account. It’s one big collision in hyperspace.