As you might have seen, the people at Tribune have launched ChicagoNow. Well, sort of. It’s still in beta, and it doesn’t have a real home page yet. But it does have about 30 blogs, everything from “Bulls Confidential” to “Garage Sale Warrior.”

A promotional video promises at least 80 blogs by year’s end and describes the site as “Huffington Post meets Facebook for Chicago.” The video talks about some of the things you might expect: “cutting-edge platform,” “online community,” “social networking” and “viral tools.”

I have to admit, the more I think about this concept, the more I’m intrigued by it. But, of course, this is Tribune, and I can’t help but wonder whether one of the main impetuses here is to launch a site without a lot of expensive, staff-generated content.