Hyperlocal citizen's media venture Backfence.com has announced its acquisition of Bayosphere, the San Francisco citizen's media site founded by Dan Gillmor. Dan on why he is pleased with the merger: "I'm happy that this means the small community we’ve nurtured here has a chance to grow and mature. (There's also some small financial relief for me, as I’ve been covering Bayosphere’s costs for months now.) One of the obvious options was to simply shut it down. We never wanted to do that. But it wouldn't have made sense to keep it going indefinitely, either, without some clearer purpose and direction."

Dan continues: "There will be changes, major ones. Backfence is all about local, not global, serving needs that many of us believe has been underserved by traditional media -- for entirely sound business reasons. Take a look around the Backfence sites, and you'll see how their tools focus people in a relatively small geographical area on helping each other know what's going on."

The first of its hyperlocal Bay Area blogs will focus on Palo Alto. CEO Susan DeFife: "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." Also announced: the appointment of Merrill Brown, founding editor of MSNBC.com, to its board of directors.

Also, on the general topic of the challenge of building community, see Kevin Anderson's commentary in Strange Attractor.