Our first social hub was the award-winning Bakotopia.com. Conceived as a way to reach a growing audience of young adults who were embracing the Internet, Bakotopia was developed as a social networking site for Bakersfield residents ages 18-35.

The site quickly grew to over 300,000 pageviews a month. Bakotopia was thee recipient of an NAA Digital Edge Award in 2006. In late 2005, Bakomatic product manager Dan Pacheco was also given a 20 Under 40 award for his role in development of the site.

Amp.az, created by The Arizona Republic in February 2007 using Bakomatic, has a similar social/youth focus to Bakotopia. It incorporates some other features built by the Amp team, including a "Shoutbox" that features shout outs submitted by users in real time.

Bakotopia and Amp have four key features:

1. User Profiles: Pictures of recent visitors who have profiles appear right on the home page, prompting people to update their profiles frequently and make them better. User profiles now receive more traffic than other content on the site.

2. Social Networking: Every user gets an optional profile page where they can publish pictures and other information about themseves, and invite their friends into their network. Invited users are also prompted to create a profile, after which the two users' profiles are linked together. We also let users type in their interests, an present those interests in "tag clouds" that we call the Are You Into feature. While user profiles and social networking were first developed for Bakotopia, they are now surfaced in every other Bakomatic site and are part of the fabric of the platform.

3. Musician Tools: Bands are able to promote their music through streaming radio players they can manage on their own, post their gigs, look for other musicians to play with, and sell or swap their equipment.

4. Listings and Articles: Anyone can post listings of items for sale or trade, personals, and random rants. Users have the option to post these ads anonymously, giving them more control over who has their information. Anyone reading a listing can respond via a private message or public comment, even for anonymous listings.

The Northwest part of Bakersfield is a fast-growing suburb whose residents have adopted their own unique identity over time. It has a number of small businesses who typically can't afford the advertising rates of the flagship newspaper, and residents who often complain that the newspaper doesn't cover the issues that matter most to their community.

In the Spring of 2004, we decided to target this audience in a different way with a new product called The Northwest Voice. Rather than hire a big staff of reporters and stringers, we invited readers to submit their own stories to our Web site. Northwestvoice.com now receives 10,000 page views daily, and its companion print edition, which features user-submitted stories chosen by our editors, is delivered to over 24,000 homes. The Voice became profitable after 18 months and is now operating in the black.

The Voice was the first U.S. newspaper to adopt this model, now referred to as "citizen media" or "citizen journalism." We have since expanded the idea to the southwest part of Bakersfield with The Southwest Voice, launched in April, 2006, as well as certain sections of The Bakersfield Californian itself.

Bakersfield's Hispanic population has been growing for some time and is now approaching 50%. Long an area of "low hanging fruit", the Hispanic market was also elusive, and efforts to provide a Spanish version of the newspaper didn't resonate well with the audience.

We decided to turn our approach on its head, and in September 2005 created a weekly glossy magazine targeted to English-speaking Hispanics. The response from the community was immediately positive.

Más operates from a magazine tradition, with a staff of writers, editors and photographers who bring the magazine to life each week. The web site offers additional information, including an events calendar that includes content from Bakotopia, as well as user profiles for Más readers.

New to Bakersfield was created to provide newcomers and people who were thinking of moving with a "one stop shop" of information needed to adjust to life in a new city. From school test scores to day trip planning to reviews of over 90 area restaurants, New to Bakersfield is the preeminent site for all things Bakersfield.

The Arizona Republic is also now using Bakomatic to power user profiles and blogs on its flagship web site. See their Members section. They're also beginning to use blogs and profiles for targeted sites within AZCentral, such as Arizona Moms.

TheJHub.com, a product of the Idaho State Journal in Pocatello, Idaho, takes a hybrid approach. Like Bakotopia.com, it is targeted to a younger audience, but it is also promoted from the main newspaper's web site in its Blogs section. Using Bakomatic's embedded pagelet technology, new blog entries appear immediately in a section of the Idaho State Journal web site.