From Ad Age:
In an interview after the earnings call, Mr. Armstrong expanded on these thoughts, saying that the new Patch, to be unveiled later this year, “is really about unlocking the vitality in towns…groups, commerce, and the social aspects of towns for a much deeper, richer engagement level.”
He was told that what he was describing sounded a little bit like a social network. “You could call it community networking,” he responded. As for the listings business, he was asked if Patch was trying to build a competitor to Craigslist. “Craigslist and other companies like that that sell used merchandise haven’t really scaled into communities,” he said. “They’ve been very metro-focused. One of the opportunities for Patch…is the ability for us on the commerce side to offer the people the ability to do listings and other things like that locally.”
Have they ever really been about journalism? All I ever see from them is daily business profiles, little league scores, what’s on TV tonight and a lot of other stuff I don’t really care about.
When they started, they promised to do what the big metro papers weren’t doing anymore and provide strong local news coverage. That didn’t last long and now we’re stuck with this morass of minutiae that has very little to do with news and even less value. How they ever expected to monetize this steaming pile excrement, I will never understand.