Ghost of Midnight

Yi-Tan, rBlock and FPF

Thanks to Jerry Michalski for inviting me to participate in his Yi-Tan Weekly Call today about community building at the neighborhood level.  There, I learned about other efforts, including…

LifeAt, Meet the Neighbors, Neighborology, i-neighbors, Front Porch Forum, TownConnect, Mesh Tennis and rBlock

Vivek Hutheesin, rBlock’s founder, offered many excellent insights.  And from his most recent blog posting…

Fatdoor has just announced in Private Equity Hub their first-round financing through Norwest Venture Partners and their new CEO, Jennifer Dulski, from Yahoo!  Here is a quote from Jennifer, which I know is true from my own experience:

“Building online local communities that scale is an extremely difficult problem to solve, but the market opportunity is immense and consumers are craving a solution that will make this vision a reality.”

To address this immense market, any platform needs to first solve some very difficult problems in four areas – boundaries, applications, verification, and privacy.  rBlock believes that it has solved them all.  However to win a big share of this immense market, rBlock’s solutions must be integrated in a manner that leads to viral growth.  This requires, among other things, a user-interface that’s easy-to-use and scalable.  rBlock believes it has solved this too, paving the way for more plan execution than experimentation.