Hyperlocal

I was reading something from the guy that's doing Outside.in. He's talking about doing "hyperlocal" web services (things relevant to people at a very small level and made the following--I think uninformed--point in his post:

• The pothole paradox plays out with any number of different topics. The delicious Indian place that at long last opens up in your neighborhood; the creepy science teacher who finally retires at the local public school; the come-from-behind victory staged by the middle-school lacrosse team -- all of these are potentially exciting events if they are happening in the communities you inhabit, but they are mind-numbingly dull if they're one county over -- much less on another coast.

What bothers me about his comment is that I think you can't know if something's going to be relevant (confidence level 95% say) to someone unless it's a stated need for them. They have to opt in! So what's really needed is connecting a web service to people's preferences and interests like so: I have a local (or online) store of my history, etc. I keep track of restuarant types I like, my favorite restaurants, teachers I had, schools, I went to, etc. Keeping all of this information has to be fun, easy, and maintainable. You could build it. If people then exposed all or parts of this personal information to web services we'd be golden.