AOL Launches New “Globally Local” Blog Network
AOL has launched a new magazine-style blog site that attempts to combine entertainment news with city-based stories. Digital City describes itself as having “a local slant, but global appeal.”
Officially announced this morning, the site’s front page now features a post talking about celebrity birthdays and other noteworthy occasions on 9/29. Perusing the site further will uncover everything from food and nightlife-related news to holiday-specific content and even travel talk. Oddly, for a site with “local slant,” the site doesn’t let you enter your own city to find local information relevant to you (at least, not in any easily located way); rather, it presents a mish-mosh of stories that may or may not relate to random cities here and there. The goal, seemingly, is to have those stories appeal to audiences both inside and outside of the featured geographic regions.
Interestingly, the name Digital City comes from an old and no longer used AOL brand name. Maybe the new incarnation will eventually find its crowd, but my initial reaction is similar to The Social’s: The site seems a bit unfocused and all over the place as far as content and approach.
AOL, by the way, isn’t the only familiar name launching a new network this week. Former staffers from Weblogs Inc started a network called Crowd Fusion recently as well, with the first site — a gadget blog named Obsessable — trying to take a different angle from its competition. Read Duncan Riley’s take on the project here.
