Outside.in and Feedburner

One of the things we've been wrestling with from the very beginning with outside.in is how to get contributions from blogs or media outlets that only occasionally write about local issues. We're already automatically indexing content from full-time placebloggers -- people who write consistently about their communities -- but it's a trickier issue for bloggers like me who write about their neighborhood (or other neighborhoods) once every ten posts or so. We want to be able to capture those posts, without having to capture the other nine posts that aren't relevant to a location. From the beginning, we've had tools that let people suggest specific stories to outside.in using our suggest story tool and bookmarklet, but today we've just rolled out a very cool alternative: a Feedburner "geotag this post" flare. You can see it working here on my blog already. If a post hasn't been geo-tagged yet, you'll see a little invitation to "geo-tag this post." Once the post has been tagged though, the flare identifies the zip code and gives you a preview of how many posts we have for that zip code at outside.in. And then you can click on the link and go straight to a neighborhood overview page for that zip. (See my Rushkoff post for an example.)
If you're already using Feedburner, it's trivial to add the outside.in flare to your blog. Fred Wilson has a good overview of how you add flare generally, as well as this post that explains why he's excited about the outside.in version.

Comments

[Tom]

That's great news. Now how about ways to automatically aggregate tags for Flickr and del.icio.us bookmarks (kind of like the for:username network tags) so that they can feed into outside.in, without depending on your fulltime placebloggers?

[Robert Siegel]

Dear Steven -
I just finished reading Ghost Map and I have a number of detailed comments. Since these include both positive and negative comments I would prefer to send me to you directly rather than post them on the web. (After reviewing the comments, you are welcome to post them.) If you are interested, please send me a note.
Best wishes,
Robert Siegel
Associate Professor
Microbiology and Immunology
Stanford University

[Robert Ness]

Hello Steven,

I am starting a mobile social networking business in China. We were inspired by the concept of smart mobs, refering to how "emergent" behavior amongst crowds networked with mobile devices. In a country where 400 million people own mobile phones, many of those with the ability to surf the web, emergent behavior in mobile networks has strong implications. This is especially the case when the country is undergoing rapid economic, political, and social change. From the context of your book Emergence, what are your thoughts on the relationship between emergent behavior and mobile phones and other hand-held networked devices?