Washington Post's ReadExpress: Map-Based Hyper-Local Online Community News
Last week I interviewed Liddy Manson, the vice president and general manager of Jobs, Cars and Real Estate at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.

At Manson's suggestion I also interviewed, Chris Ma, VP of Washington Post Company who's been a key force behind the WaPo's Express print tabloid (and it's 250k readers) and now its online version, ReadExpress.

Chris Ma calls ReadExpress, "neighborhood oriented and hyper-local" and hopes it will, "provide some of that sense of what is going on in the neighborhoods, around which our communities revolve."

Over the weekend, as I've been orchestrating a conversation between Google Maps Mania and the Google Map mash up developer at the Washington Post, I've been working at this piece, mostly wondering how to boil my 2,600 words of notes into the core ideas that I find the most meaningful for the newspaper industry as well as my primary audience - online marketers.

ReadExpress: Map-Based and Hyper-Local
My key takeaway concept from the site, as I mention in Navigate Content by Metro Stop is that it enables content navigation - and increased local activity - through the use of a Google Maps/metro stops mash up.

Each metro stop's corresponding map page enables users to find food/entertainment/shopping. In addition each stop's page includes stories and blog posts that are about that specific geographic area.

And that's what I'm talking about when I say map-based and hyper-local. Watch for individual metro stops to become focal points for users - I expect they will eventually be able to tag the areas around their metro stops for each other and non-residents.

Ma says, "for people whose lives revolve around the transit system we hope this [metro map] is a useful entry into a lot of deep data."

Commuters as Community: a Highly Mobile Readership
Ma's vision of the metro riders themselves as a community connected through their shared experience of the commute is the definition of a well-defined target audience. "They share a certain routine," Ma said. "They share neighborhood affinities because they share stops, they're all going to work or school in the morning, leading an urban life style."

He launched the print tab to target this group, but it's the site that will really begin enabling the kinds of networking and sharing that we've come to love in the Web 2.0 era.

The ReadExpress poll - a daily opinion poll on the site - exhibits one aspect of this commuter-community concept. The poll enables voters to see how commuters from their own point of embarkment voted that day, thereby getting a sense of how they do - or don't - fit into their hyper-local community.

Ma described that aspect of the poll when I asked about social networking. He believes that through encouraging exploration of what other embarkment points think ReadExpress is laying the groundwork for what could possibly evolve into something along the lines of a social network.

The beauty of course is that the network already exists - its the metro riders themselves and they participate in this network every morning on their way to work and school. For ReadExpress I think it will be a matter of encouraging more interactions, even if those happen only on the site itself for now.

Classifieds as Entertainment
Ma described one aspect of the site that he considers to be an interesting experiment, the Window Shopper section. This blog's author features interesting and quirky classified listings and wraps them in commentary.

Such as when the writer chides a "missed connections" commuter: "Since this resulted in a missed-connection post, let's see if we get this straight: You won't flirt on the Metro, but will consider it when he's running by you in the middle of a sweaty jog?"

Ma explained they sought to look to the classifieds as a source of entertainment, as well as a sort of anthropological and sociological study of sorts. I see a strong love connection opportunity for the metro riders too in that Ma noted, "you'll find that quite a large number of those personals tell a story of someone seeing someone else on the metro reading Express."

The classifieds-as-entertainment comes somewhat pre-envisioned in the Woot Inc. sales model. It's also smacks of, but has no real relationship to, Mark Cuban's live TV-ad concept.

What ReadExpress Borrowed from New Media:
Blogs, obviously, were big influencers. The layout of the front page includes the well known hierarchy of recency, and you'll see titles and blurbs much as you do here in Search Engine Lowdown.

Because they're "neighborhood oriented and hyper-local," Ma said that, "a blog format was very appropriate, and "a way, given the conventions of blogging, to invite our users into the conversation, providing additional interesting content." That way, he said, "we can much more quickly and extensively build up the very local content of the site."

Local DC blogs were also major influencers, and Ma cited Mike Grass, cofounder of the DCist, as "our principle driving force." Grass is now the lead blogger for the ReadExpress, writing the Free Ride blog column.

Lean Staff, Focused On Serving Users, Soft Launch Phase
One note - I peppered Manson and Ma throughout our conversations with ideas, questions about SMS, mobile devices, social networking, and other possible map mash ups.

They had to keep reminding me that a) they had only had the site live for a day (at the time of our interviews), b) they're operating with a lean, albeit highly experimental staff, and c) all changes will come down to what the users want and use.

This focus on building out according to user need and demand reminded me of how Ask CEO Jim Lanzone described their work on the Ask search engine.

At the time of the interview, 4-26-06, they hadn't yet announced the site to their readers. They were in soft launch phase, doing load testing, getting people used to the site and seeking initial feedback. When they do announce the site (likely sometime this week) they're going to print a very clear users guide and explain to people how they can get involved with the existing functions.

ReadExpress: "a down payment on how we hope to iterate the site"
Ma describes ReadExpress, as it now exists, as "a down payment on how we hope to iterate the site."

So what are they looking at next? Ma stated that "there are a number of tools we can bring to using this kind of information for planning and rendezvous." I asked if they were looking at using the Google Calendar API.

Ma said, "we're still evaluating for sure... but it seems to be excellent product."

Yahoo, of course, has a calendar API of its own, and a Map API for that matter.

When I asked him about plans for mobile devices he said: "We're the perfect brand for the mobile product - it's a quick read product for people on the go... a person in motion... mobile products that build on the kind of information that we deliver in print, very carefully packaged - we know people are busy and in motion..."

Watch for ReadExpress to develop in "ways that will really serve day to day interactions for people who live an urban, highly mobile style."

Should Your Company Get Map-Based and Hyper-Local?
Definitely! ...if it truly serves your customers. I saw that for Ma it was his passion for serving the commuting readership and his understanding of their needs that lay behind every decision.

In Client as Audience, I wrote that "the companies that come to think of their clients as an audience and provide them with the media/information they're looking for will come to capture wider and wider audience/client share, and they will learn more quickly what it is their customers are looking for because of increased interaction."

If nothing else I hope you got from this article an idea of what coming to understand your client as audience really looks like. In the case of ReadExpress it's a beautiful thing.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |