Oct
22
Working out the structure of your locales can be surprisingly difficult. The world is fairly well organized around the concept of countries (after all, we wage wars to define them), but locales often aren’t countries, but languages, regions, markets or combinations of the above, and those are much fuzzier.
I’ve been looking into the structure of locales, and one concept kind of presented itself, that of "hyperlocal locales". I’m not sure if that’s a good name for it, but it’s the best I could think of so far.
Hyperlocal locales are very specialized locales. You see them all over the place when you look at what companies really do when they start localizing, and they’re often surprising.
An example is "Catalonia - Catalan", or "Barcelona - Catalan". Catalan is a language spoken in Catalonia, a part of Spain. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia. It’s the second official language in Spain apart from Spanish. When you’re in Barcelona, you’ll notice that signs, advertising and such are often in both Spanish and Catalan, or only in Catalan. Speaking Catalan is a matter of local pride and identity, therefore, if you want to target this market you’ll need to create a hyperlocal locale "Catalan".
Another example is "French Canadian", or "Quebec - French", as Yahoo calls it for example. French is spoken in Quebec as a matter of great national pride, and if you run, say, an intranet in Canada with offices in Quebec you’re even legally obliged to provide information in French as well as in English.
You’ll notice in the screenshot of Yahoo’s locales that they have "U.S. in Chinese" and "Y! Telemundo" (= "Hispanic US") as well, more hyperlocal locales.
The world’s large cities also present opportunities for hyperlocal locales. Craigslist is famous for this approach: they started out in San Fransisco (hyperlocal from the start), and have branched out by country (Colombia, for example) but also by city. A city like Bangalore (a tech hub in India) is a big market for Craigslist and has its own Craigslist Bangalore. Instead of expanding to India (aka "the Indian subcontinent" - India is huge), Craigslist goes hyperlocal and expands to specific Indian cities, one by one. It’s a smart strategy for a marketplace.
Especially for sites that that rely on reaching critical mass (marketplaces, social networks with part of their service in the physical world), hyperlocalizing can be effective: it lets you limit your coverage (Bangalore, not India) so you can reach critical mass faster.
So what do you think of this concept of hyperlocal locales? Is it useful? Boring? Can you think of a better name for it? I’d love to hear comments and thoughts.
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:29 am
And the point I was trying to make, that maybe didn’t come out very well, is that going for a hyperlocal locale can be more effective that just covering countries and languages. In some cases, hyperlocalizing for Mexico City might be better than localizing for Mexico. What do you think?
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:45 am
International clubs with members also face issue this when working with local groups. ACM SIGCHI started with local groups in US cities or regions (”BayCHI”) but had to allow national groups when the need arose (”SIGCHI.BE”). See also UXnet’s list of local representatives: http://uxnet.org/locales.php
I firmly believe it’s a case of bottom-up decision making: IF you have someone at a certain level THEN create the localized version.
As for “hyperlocal”: since “local” is relative, I’d use “subnational” for the hyperlocales you mention, but feel free to disagree
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:13 am
Interesting article, Peter. But why not simply stick to the established terminology of naive set theory? Sets, subsets, unions, intersections, absolute/relative complements, etc? The mathematicians have been creating these kinds of categorizations for centuries.
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:29 am
Eric - mmm… that doesn’t sound right either. It’s not about simple unions or intersections, these locales tend to be more fuzzy..
PeterB: yes I totally agree with the bottom-up comment. I don’t want to use “subnational” because it’s not always subnational (you might have a locale for the Colombian emigrants all over the world), and *nation* doesn’t seem the most salient attribute often in these locales… “Subnational” seems limiting, focusing the attention on nations where that’s not really what I wanted.. But yea, just thinking out loud about all this.
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:51 pm
I like the idea — it seems to reflect the emphasis on specific users (and, presumably, their locale-oriented goals) rather than on aggregates or averages. Targeting the _real_ groups rather than presuming that political or geographical boundaries automagically define everything.
One question I have: How would you mesh this with non-locale-based groupings? E.g., if different age groups have different aims/needs (which are partially associated with, but not dependent on, locale), would you create multiple “hyperlocal locales” (”French Canadian Young”, “French Canadian Elderly”, etc) so that the locale system/organization encompasses everything, or would you divide things up (with locale and age group treated as independent, even for locales where age group might be irrelevant), or something else entirely?
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Steven - good question, I don’t have a quick answer for that one
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Well, actually, when we create and label categories (or sets or locales or cigar boxes), they do become pretty definite. Fuzziness is what we, as IAs, invariably sharpen. One might argue that this is actually our raison d’être.
My point was simply that you are not really introducing a new concept, but merely acknowleging levels of granularity that have already been observed and named by the mathematical community. And if you really want, you can hyper or subset this to death - the smallest grain being where any individual is standing at any given moment - sort of like zooming in on your house in Google maps.
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
You’re right Eric, the “hyper” doesn’t work, it’s just annoying
But I’m still trying to somehow express that many times, your mix of locales includes a few regions (”Latin America”), a few countries or languages, and a few very local locales (”New York City”). It’s a pattern.. I want to find a way to explain/express it. 
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:29 am
I Catalan and I don’t see how Catalonia i hyperlocal locate. In the case you are speking i your exemple is only “language”, because Catalonia is more than BArcelona; moreover BArcelona has some characteristics or necessities very diferent from other places of Catalonia.
Another detail: Spain has 4 constitutional languages: Spanish, CAtalan, Basque and Galego.
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:37 am
Eric & Peter V: From what I can tell, you’re talking about two different frames of reference. One frame is trying to describe something that happens in nature (in human social patterns) which is, like most things in nature, very fuzzy — you can tell where its center is, but not so much where the edges are. The other frame is about what sorts of rational, ordered systems we use to address or make use of those fuzzy, natural patterns.
It’s the old bottom-up/top-down distinction, no? Maybe sets don’t quite capture the nuance necessary to describe the phenomenon? (though they’re the best way for us to make systems — websites, services, databases, etc — i.e. the machinery that roughly mimics their complexity?)
November 1st, 2007 at 7:56 pm
All I can think of after reading your post and the comments is the idea of a node as expressed in cyberpunk writing. A William Gibsonesque point where commerce, community and data converge to be come something ‘other’ and just as real as anything in the physical world. Something so human that it cant not exist yet so vague its hard to define or even see it.
I don’t think that the bottom-up/top-down concept works for it nor do sets it seems more organic to me like an ever widening spiral that randomly spawns other spirals. If that makes any sense.
I also wonder if it can be controlled and made to happen or if it can only be successful on accident?
Good thoughts.