In our first year of Front Porch Forum, more than 25% of the city has subscribed. In on neighborhood we surveyed where 90% are on board, 50% had posted in the past six months. Take a look at our member testimonials to get a sense of things… http://frontporchforum.com/testimonials

Cheers! -Michael

On the subject of national/megalith versus local media: My question is more towards whether a national megalith can provide incentive and platform for vibrant local media that still feels local, and not like a local version of USA Today with “your weather” in the upper corner and that’s about it…

Even local newspaper blogs haven’t cracked that code yet. A recent study we conducted internally here told us a certain major market local paper see a post rate of less than 2 per week on their “neighborhood blogs” and less than 2 comments per post.

The top line from participant bloggers:
–40/60 split between those also participating in other blogging and those blogging for first time.
–The top line from readers and other Seattle bloggers: Stale environment (old contributor bios, un-updated blogs), low readership, low engagement (comments are rare), and generally low interest content that tends to be boosterish.

So I guess hyper local media doesn’t necessarily win just because it isn’t national - much as a crummy local electronics shop won’t beat out a big box retailer without being better for the fact of being local.