According to its co-creator Steven B. Johnson outside.in is “an attempt to collectively build the geographic Web, neighborhood by neighborhood.” Johnson explains that the purpose of outside.in is to unite the various voices emerging from hyperlocal bloggers, review sites, city government sites and traditional media and ground the information geographically.

When focusing on hyperlocal content, the relevance of the information becomes paramount in order to avoid what Steven Johnson calls the “pothole paradox.” The idea is that the pothole in front of your home or apartment is a big deal to you, but your friends a few blocks over couldn’t care less.

Ultimately, the hyperlocal approach isn’t just about people typing in their zip codes and receiving aggregated local content but rather contributing content in the form of stories, photos, videos, etc. Users want personalized content but they also want control over their media, control over the way their stories, locations and neighborhoods are represented. They want in on the action.