Up until now, fwix has stuck to indexing and serving up hyperlocal news from neighborhood blogs and news sites. Its main competitor in that respect is Outside.in. But fwix is moving beyond local news to create a broader geo index via publisher widgets and its API.
In addition to its existing local news API (which is already being tested by the New York Times Co. and the UPI), fwix is adding geo-tagged status updates (from Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Brightkite), geo-photos (from Flickr, yfrog, Smugmug, and Twitpic), local events (from Eventbrite, Eventful, Upcoming, and Zvents), nearby reviews and restaurants (from Yelp and Citysearch), concerts (Songkick), local crime and government data, weather, listings (Oodle, Trulia), and deals from local merchants (Groupon, Town Hog, and Living Social). A little map pops down you tell you where these places are.
Publishers and sites can pick and choose whatever data they want and create widgets with a customized local feed they can place in a sidebar. These could include Tweets about about the publisher’s business, Flickr photos, check-ins, or Yelp reviews. Widget publishers can also opt to include ads in the widgets targeted to the same location and content on their sites and split the revenues with fwix. Affiliate links to group buying deals is another source of revenue.
“What we are building is this massive geo index,’ says CEO Darian Shiraz. Developers can use the API to pull in localized status updates, photos, and more. Publishers can create their own widget from any of the given geo streams. Mobile apps can also use the data. Fwix is at first exposing all of this new data only through its widgets and APIs. Eventually, fwix will roll it out on its own site as well.