This techie version of a "bear hug" involves deploying powers of annoyance rather than shareholder proxies. "Dave Winer used the bearhug to wrap his arms around Netscape’s version of RSS and not let go until a merged RSS was born," muses an unusually wistful but incomprehensible as always Gillmor. "The time may be here to bearhug Twitter."

Gillmor's immediate goal is to create a standard for identifying every utterance made on the new microblogging services — not just Twitter, but Jaiku, Plurk, and the rest. This will serve to make it easier to cross-reference your own bon mots, self-promotional stunts, and hookup attempts. Never mind the architectural details of Gillmor's mostly-gibberish plan: What he's really trying to do, as Winer did with Netscape, is attempt a credit-nicking takeover of Twitter's best ideas.

He's unlikely to succeed. Bear Hug Camp will certainly be an opportunity for the Old Men of Blogging to stroke each other's egos, and more. But Twitter should remember: It's not a hug Gillmor wants to give them. It's an attention grab that leaves a bad-touch feeling and a permalink in its wake. Better to let Gillmor and his gang beat their man drums in the woods, alone, together.

Backfence had secured at least $3 million in funding from SAS Investors and Omidyar Network, the investment vehicle of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Little explanation is provided for Backfence's closure, but little is required. Journalism is a difficult business; citizen journalism is a precarious business ... if it's a business at all.

In the chat after his Berkeley lecture ("The State of American Media") this week, Dan Rather talked to ZDNet journalist Steve Gillmor, who came with indie journalist (and ex-Mercury-News columnist) brother Dan Gillmor and Steve's look-alike friend, RSS czar Dave Winer. To save you from caption confusion, here's the breakdown:

Dan Rather: No longer American media. The warm voice and stern face of CBS News for over 20 years until citizen muckrakers brought him down.


Dan Gillmor: In the long tail of American media. Started citizen-journalism site Bayosphere, now part of East Coast operation Backfence. Calls Steve his older, wiser brother.


Steve Gillmor: Part of American media. Blogs for ZDNet. Calls Dan his little, smarter brother.


Dave Winer: The man behind the New American Media curtain. Invented a major form of RSS. One of the podcasting podfathers (it takes a village).


There! Now you won't be confused — unless you start reading their work.

Photos: donlbe and Dan Farber [Flickr]

In the press release, Backfence touts itself as "a vital gathering place for local information and discussion that's not available anywhere else."

Except, of course, for the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News (well, until it dies), SFist, Metroblogging SF, Craigslist, Craig Newmark and Jeff Jarvis's upcoming site, local blogs, Upcoming.org, Laughing Squid, and every restaurant, cafe, conference room, college campus, and office in the Valley.

But hey, it's the new hotness, so gorge on the press release after the jump.

Welcome to Backfence [Backfence.com]

Backfence launched its first sites in McLean and Reston, Va., in May 2005 and has since added sites in Bethesda, Md., and Arlington, Va. Consisting entirely of content contributed by readers, the sites provide hyperlocal news coverage of the communities, as well as event listings, reviews and ratings of local businesses, photo galleries, free classifieds and other services.

"Backfence provides local community members with a vital gathering place for local information and discussion that's not available anywhere else," DeFife said. "It has been exciting to watch as each community creates a place that reflects its unique personality. We look forward to being part of the Bay Area and watching as it brings its own voice to Backfence."

DeFife said Backfence chose to launch its first Bay Area hyperlocal site in Palo Alto because "it is the linchpin of Silicon Valley. Its broad collection of community organizations, strong business and commercial base, high Internet penetration and its population base are the kinds of things we look for in deciding where Backfence should open local sites. We're looking forward to becoming an important part of the Palo Alto community and then launching additional sites in Bay Area communities over the next few months."

Both Backfence and Bayosphere received funding from Omidyar Network, the mission-based investment group founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to foster social, political and economic self-empowerment. Bayosphere also received funding from technology entrepreneur Mitch Kapor.

Backfence also announced today that Merrill Brown, the founding editor of MSNBC.com and a leading new-media consultant, has been elected to the company's Board of Directors.

Brown, who had been a member of the Backfence Advisory Board for the past year, brings a wealth of media experience to the company's Board of Directors. He is a principal in MMB Media, a consulting and investment firm and was recently named National Editorial Director of News 21, the content development component of the news initiative launched by the Carnegie and Knight foundations. In addition, Brown was the founding Editor-in-Chief of MSNBC.com and a founder of Court TV. He also has been an executive with RealOne, Channels magazine and The Washington Post Co., and is a member of the advisory board of Gillmor's Center for Citizen Media.

"I'm very excited by the potential for Backfence to reinvent the way that local communities get and discuss local news and information. The company's concept for hyperlocal citizens' media represents a powerful new form of advertising-supported information, and I'm looking forward to helping the Backfence management team bring their concepts to fruition," Brown said. "I'm a longtime admirer of Dan Gillmor, and am pleased that he's working with Backfence. I'm confident that Bayosphere will be a vital part of Backfence's westward expansion."

About Backfence
Founded in 2004 by Mark Potts and Susan DeFife, Backfence (www.backfence.com) has headquarters in Vienna, Va. Backfence is building advertising-backed, hyperlocal community Web sites in which members of the community create virtually all of the content. Backfence sites bring together user-generated content tools such as blogs, photo galleries and events calendars, as well as do-it-yourself advertising tools. Backfence is designed to be easy for participation by everyone in the community. Access to the sites is free, and all that is required to post information is a simple registration. Backfence is supported by local and national advertising, including display ads, enhanced Yellow Pages listings and business classified ads—all priced low enough to make purchasing an ad to reach the Bay Area community a "cash-register decision" for local businesses. The company raised $3 million in funding in October 2005 from SAS Investors of New York, Omidyar Network of Silicon Valley, and a group of Washington-area private investors. The company has 10 employees.

About Dan Gillmor
Dan Gillmor is founder and director of the Center for Citizen Media, a project to enhance and expand grassroots media and its reach. The center is an affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Law School and the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Gillmor is author of "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People" (O'Reilly Media, 2004), a book that explains the rise of citizens' media and why it matters. From 1994 until early 2005 Gillmor was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. During 2005 he worked on media projects at Grassroots Media Inc., which was funded by Omidyar Network and Mitch Kapor. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont, Gillmor received a Herbert Davenport fellowship in 1982 for economics and business reporting at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Sorry for the non-story here but

1) Steve Gillmor is not a root.net investor or advisor and

2) I have invited Mike in his TechCrunch capacity at the very last minute in replacement of Dick Costolo from FeedBurner who got grounded in Chicago by a snow storm the morning of the session. With just a few hours to find a suitable speaker, I could either get only 3 panelists, or add Mike who graciously agreed to join us. Edgeio had nothing to do with this.

Right, time to update the old disclosure table. After the jump, a full run-down of Valley bloggers, their special interests, and whether they're telling.

Earlier: Disclosure, kids: SDForum [Valleywag]
And: Wall Street Journal's fake blogger scandal [Valleywag]

Here's the Register of Interests:

Feels like the WSJ is just sniping at bloggers. Rather embarrassing to see them stretch this far. Is there a grudge they're not disclosing?

Incidentally, let's flesh this register out. Which other bloggers are tied to outside interests? Comment or e-mail.

Blog Buzz on High-Tech Start-Ups Causes Some Static [WSJ]

From Dan: A Letter to the Bayosphere Community [Bayosphere]