"The magic of hyperlocal sites, be they Backfence, other startups, Yahoo Groups or local blogs, is that they provide a forum for community members to share and discuss what's going on around town. The back-and-forth of a good online conversation can be as rich, deep and interesting—or more so—than traditional journalism. In fact, the role of journalists in this process is overrated—except maybe by journalists! The less involved site managers are, aside from lightly moderating the conversation, the better. Proponents of some other citizens' media models argue that journalists are essential to hyperlocal sites as thought leaders and examples of professional reporting. But that adds considerable expense, and in our conversations with community members we learned that the intrusion of an all-knowing journalist would tend to stifle, not enhance, community conversation, by setting top-down agendas and crowding out community members."

--Mark Potts, Backfence co-founder, discussing lessons learned from the now-shuttered service.

(Susan sez: This is good advice for everyone seeking to integrate community into their services--which should be everyone in every vertical, content area, niche, service and CRM site.)