INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Hoodline continues to serve as a reliable source of neighborhood news for San Francisco and Oakland, but it’s also been building tools
that help other publications supplement their local coverage.Earlier this year, the company launched a news wire that automates the creation
of local news stories using online data sources like Yelp and Zumper
Now it’s also releasing a content recommendation widget that’s similarly focused on local news.We’ve all seen widgets from companies
like Outbrain and Taboola, usually with celebrity-focused, gimmicky or otherwise sensationalistic headlines
COO Jes Wolfe said the Hoodline module was built in response to requests from the “hundreds” of publishers and broadcasters that the
company works with — they wanted to provide content recommendations that were genuinely relevant to readers, not just “generic
clickbait.”The stories being recommended come from several different sources — the individual publisher (in fact, they can limit the
recommendations to their own articles if they want), the Hoodline Local Data Wire and the broader network of publishers.Whatever the source,
CTO Shwetank Kumar said Hoodline’s Atlas platform can automatically tag articles with things like geolocation and sentiment
So when the module shows up next to an article, it can recommend other stories that are locally relevant and have a similar topic and
tone.By limiting recommendations to local news from the Hoodline network, the company should be able to avoid most of the clickbait filling
In addition, Head of Product Melissa Mazman said Hoodline is trying to “strike a balance” by surfacing content that people actually want
to read without prioritizing clicks at the cost of quality or other engagement metrics.Kumar added that the location-focused approach also
means that Hoodline can provide these recommendations without tracking your online behavior
Or as he put it, “We try to do personalization through localization rather than through privacy violation.”Of course, not every
neighborhood will have a rich supply of relevant stories, but Mazman said the module “keeps zooming out” to the city or even state level
until it finds relevant content
(Not that going statewide is generally necessary — Mazman said pulling back to the metropolitan area is usually enough.)Hoodline says that
in the initial tests, the module resulted in an average clickthrough rate that was more than double those of existing products.You can
actually judge the recommendations side-by-side with Outbrain on the websites of local ABC TV stations (Hoodline participated in the startup
accelerator run by ABC’s parent company Disney)
For example in this story about a taqueria fire in Houston, Outbrain’s recommendations appear on top, while Hoodline powers the “More
from Houston” headlines.By the way, I should note that Hoodline’s editorial team is led by former TechCrunch co-editor (and my longtime
The startup was acquired by Ripple News (now known as Pixel Labs) in 2016, and since then, Hoodline has become the brand for all of the
company’s consumer-facing products.
