nOtice, launched into beta by the Guardian yesterday, is the most recent attempt to answer a massively important question – is there any place for Big Publishing in Little Media?

There can be no question that hyperlocal publishing (a) is flourishing and (b) has a big future, but will the likes of the Guardian and DMGT (via the Local People project) be the ones to benefit from that?

It is, of course, only six months since the Guardian pulled the plug on Guardian Local, a local/regional news pilot, and nOtice is a distinctly different proposition taking a distinctly different approach.

Local People continues to plough ahead, thanks to the deep pockets of DMGT, with a high cost model that employs digital publishers at c£500/m for a site and then uses tem to seed content and engagement. Last month’s announcement that they were seeking franchise partners has yet be followed up any any announcement that they found any.

But the Holy Grail in this space is not the publisher of the hyperlocal site, it’s the users – engage them in substantial numbers and the business model for hyperlocal advertising adds up, don’t and it doesn’t.

Big Publishing’s approach to Little Publishing is also predicated on scale. An individual hyperlocal publisher who has sufficient passion and enthusiasm to have started a site for their area and sufficient drive to sell ads on it too should be able to make a profit mainly because his or her costs are going to be very low. Very low costs, however, are not something Big Publishing costs. Big Publishing will want to have its own platform, its own developers, its own servers, its own marketing team, its own management structure, its own Head Office and so on.

And the $64,000 question on engagement is what makes a user who could post hyperlocal content turn into one who actually does on a consistent basis? No-one has yet found the answer on a wide enough scale to make Big Publishing in the Little Publishing space a profitable proposition.