Boston.com rolling out the online social graces

By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor

Boston.com is trying to become more neighborly with its readers through a series of social networking initiatives designed to enhance its local presence.

The Web site — the online arm of The Boston Globe — embarked on a three-pronged approach, embracing publishing, aggregating and convening, said Bob Kempf, vice president of product.

“What has been a strength of Boston.com from the beginning has been our ability to serve the originally produced content at The Globe with the original Web production of the site,” he said. “We don’t consider that to be everything we do, but that is just one piece, an important piece to which the other elements can react.”

To bolster its role as a convener, the Web site, last month upgraded its forum and commenting capabilities for articles, using software from Waltham, Mass.-based developer Awareness.

Boston.com already used Awareness’ software to enable photo uploading, so it’s tethering the new blogging and commenting features around user profiles to enable readers to easily track a user’s participation.

Boston.com is also segmenting content to create vertical Web sites targeted toward specific interest groups.

On the site is: BoMoms, a page containing articles and forums aimed at young mothers in the Boston area.

“It is populated largely by forums and by a community of users posting a lot of comments on stories that are posted there,” Kempf said.

Local support

Another aspect of Boston.com’s user-generated content/social networking strategy is its recent partnership with non-profit advocate Good2gether to launch the Do Good channel. The site is aimed at linking readers with local non-profit organizations.

“We have a tremendous opportunity, because of the content that we publish, to offer the right context for people to respond to causes,” Kempf said. “We need to give them a channel and capability to do that.

“The Do Good channel is a way for readers to say, ‘I’m reading an article about a hurricane and I want to help, how can I help?’ and on Do Good there is a link to take them where they want to go.”

Do Good now contains links and information about more than 650 local non-profits, Kempf said, and Boston.com is gearing up to seek sponsorships.

“The whole area gives us a chance to provide a platform for cause-based marketing,” he said. “We know that a lot of our major companies locally have cause-based marketing messages they want to get across.”

Hyperlocal horizon

Boston.com also plans to branch out by developing a hyperlocal platform, scheduled to be rolled out later this year. The wiki-based sites will be populated with town-specific news and information.

The Awareness-anchored platform will contain a mix of internally and user-generated information, from Globe staffers and “trusted” contributors, Kempf said.

“Newspapers tend to take some of those separate brands and products and keep them isolated and not integrated with the core content experience,” Kempf said. “We need to get that mix exactly right. I think isolating your user-generated content in one place makes for a difficult business and audience proposition.”

SF Chronicle gets social

The San Francisco Chronicle last month launched SFGate BayList; a site that allows Bay Area residents to vote for and comment on local businesses.

“The SFGate BayList gives our site visitors a uniquely local resource for identifying and recognizing the best businesses that the area has to offer,” said Michele Slack, vice president of digital media for SFGate.com.

The Chronicle uses software from CityVoter to run the site and for the next 12 months the paper will roll out new content in phases, with contests promoting the new features occurring in each phase.

Meantime, The Chronicle also launched a social networking channel aimed at connecting users with non-profit community organizations. The Do Good portion of SFGate.com is fueled with software by Good2gether.

Do Good will allow users to find, research and support the issues and will be able to search by the type of cause, as well as type of involvement, including volunteering, making donations or attending an event.

Users can also look for organizations or events within certain geographical locations that will be flagged on area maps. Other social tools like the ability to e-mail search results to a friend or share on social networking and bookmarking sites are also embedded within each listing.