Yearly Archives: 2007
Is FPF a neighborhood mailing list?
KOB comments on the MediaShift site regarding the Front Porch Forum posting there…
Washington DC neighborhoods have been long served by mailing lists and some have more than 3,000 subscribers. The content, all user generated is, in sum, similar to Front Porch.
Front Porch sounds like an effort to give a little more structure to ad hoc mailing lists.
But I have to question Front Porch’s requirements, if I read this post correctly, to make its lists closed as well as require ID in a posts.
DC’s mailing lists aren’t closed. I subscribe to several. And you don’t have to include your name in a post. An ID requirement may discourage some people to post crime information or freely express concerns.
Front Porch is a reminder that mailing lists are very effective and popular. Neighborhood Mailing lists are so entrenched in DC that I’m not convinced that DC’s growing number of neighborhood blogs will necessarily unseat mailing lists as the primary source of neighborhood intel.
I agree with KOB’s support of DC’s neighborhood mailing lists. Blogs are great, but they’re one person’s view (or maybe from a few), whereas the mailing lists are from the crowd.
Front Porch Forum’s approach is a departure from DC’s neighborhood mailings lists though. Our aim is to help neighbors connect and foster community within the neighborhood. Our scale is roughly 10% of DC’s lists, that is, a few hundred households. Only residents may join and post. And all postings are clearly labeled with the author’s name, street, and email address.
I’m familiar with some of the DC mailing list (and other places like Austin, etc.), and many are popular and very helpful to a lot of people. But they don’t do much of what FPF’s neighborhood forums are doing… that is, helping nearby neighbors really get to know each other in person.
I lived in and participated on the Mount Pleasant mailing list in DC 10-12 years ago (prehistoric by internet time)… and it was great. However, I actually knew or had the chance to get to know less than 5-10% of those posting. In my FPF neighborhood, that’s reversed… there’s probably only 5-10% that I won’t ever meet, and with 90% of my neighborhood using the service that’s a huge shift.
Not on FPF yet? “You are missing out”
Thanks to Richard Donnelly and Burlington Telecom for this great review in today’s issue of BT’s e-newsletter…
BT and many other City of Burlington departments receive a lot of invaluable feedback through the 36 Front Porch Forums that cover all the neighborhoods in Burlington. If you are not participating in this free, hyper-local, neighbor-to-neighbor digest you are missing out. The effort to create and maintain the FPF is substantial! BT is proud to join other local businesses as a sponsor of this community resource. We encourage other local businesses and other city departments to consider supporting it as well.
Mailbox Lady gets Press
Good for Kelly and her funky mailbox-painting project in Huntington, VT. We covered her story last month, and now Seven Days has a lovely piece in this week’s issue by Paula Routly. The slideshow assembled by Cathy Resmer gives a richer sense than the single newsprint photo.
The rural mailbox is a study in contrasts. On the one hand, it’s a personal postal sanctuary fiercely protected by the federal government. On the other, provided the “current resident” owns it, a mailbox can also be a means of self-expression. Along Vermont roadsides, it’s not unusual to see Audubon scenes, American flags and Warren Kimble creations mingling with the standard black, slushy silver, or rusty-red metal loafs.
Kelly O’Brien is taking the mailbox medium one step further: In Huntington, the 38-year-old unemployed carpet saleswoman is turning postal regulation into public art. In the last two months, she’s transformed about 30 drab mailboxes around town into colorful creations. A red mailbox with blue polka dots and funky yellow lettering stands out on the Main Road into Huntington. Further down, a cluster of four cheerily painted boxes makes a statement at the intersection of Blackbird Swale. One of the lids is a landscape that looks like the surrounding area. Is that Camel’s Hump? In arched cursive letters it reads, “Our Road Leads to Heaven.”…
To get the word out, ironically, she resorted to electronic mail. She posted a message on Front Porch Forum, the neighborhood email listserv that is building community connections all over Chittenden County, including in Huntington. “Hi, All — I’d like to paint your mailbox!” O’Brien enthused in her initial communication with her town’s Front Porch members. “You’d be helping me out by letting me paint and take photos for my portfolio . . . and you’ll benefit by getting a one-of-a-kind mailbox.” She added, “If you hate it, I can repaint it to the original black, gray or white.”
About a dozen people responded, and O’Brien went to work — on location.
Flavorpill distills cool for half-million hipsters
The Economist (7/28/2007) writes about Flavorpill and it’s European equivalent, le cool. Flavorpill publishes “free, weekly e-mails that narrow the torrent [of hundreds of cultural events] down to the two dozen [of the] very best.
Mr Lewis started Flavorpill informally in the wake of the failure, in 2000, of a dotcom start-up. It has since accumulated 560,000 subscribers across 11 weekly publications, including editions in six cities. New York, at 85,000, is the largest. For its part, le cool was founded in 2003 after Ren© L¶nngren, who was working in advertising at the time, encountered Flavorpill on a trip to New York. Based in Barcelona, it now reaches 110,000 readers in eight cities. For now, the two overlap only in London.
Such people are highly attuned to the inauthenticity of culture manufactured in the pursuit of sales, so both Flavorpill and le cool say they are careful to separate advertising from editorial material, and to avoid promotional events. “Our readers can smell PR,” says Ms Hix. But Mr Lewis says that by selecting events that conform to the ineffable tastes of his audience, he has been able to aggregate this elusive group in a form that is attractive to advertisers. Advertisements from the likes of Budweiser, JetBlue and Nokia provide the bulk of Flavorpill's revenues.
With low overheads, limited marginal costs and eager advertisers, both companies have been able to expand without significant outside investment. Le cool's Spanish revenues could support the entire company, says Andrew Losowsky, le cool's editorial director, and advance advertising sales meant the London list was profitable months before it launched at the start of this year. Mr Lewis expects Flavorpill's revenues to be $4.2m in this, its fourth profitable year. Both companies plan editions in more cities soon.
Some crude math here... $4.2m/560,000 = $7.50/subscriber in annual revenue. Similar to Seven Days NOW, except 7D uses their staff to do the reviews instead of volunteers. All three of these services use email with web back up... that's Front Porch Forum's current distribution model too.
Hyperlocal yada yada… it’s about connecting
Interesting discussion led by Jeff Jarvis about local news online this week… does hyper local matter to 18-35 year olds or not? And, if not, then let’s just declare it dead and move on. Jeff goes the other way and says that hyperlocal is just very hard to pull off and that everyone is interested in it, regardless of age.
Yelvington.com jumps in today and really nails it…
One camp agrees hyperlocal is important. The other thinks local is dead and it’s all about hyper-me. Me, me, me.
Here’s the thing. For most people, there is no difference between hyperlocal and hyper-me, because most real people live very local lives.
I do not. Lately I’m acutely aware of how little I actually live where I live. I have a well-stamped passport, gold status on Skymiles, friends scattered around the planet. I dare not assume that other people are having the same 21st century virtual experience that I’m having with my wifi connections and my global-roaming text messages.
I get the point about hyper-me, I really do, but I also know that most people live locally. And for them, hyper-me and hyperlocal largely overlap.
Human beings need connections. We’re hardwired that way. But modern life gets in the way. TV and the automobile sell us connections but deliver isolation. Stand at a street corner and count the cars with drivers talking on their cellphones. They’re fighting back.
I’m looking at some proprietary research from one city where fully 38 percent of women who were interviewed reported that connecting was their biggest personal challenge.
Virtual connections through a social networking platform are better than no connections at all, but the real opportunity, I think, is in virtual connections that are combined with real connections. Physical-world connections. Hyperlocal space.
That’s what Front Porch Forum is all about. And I don’t doubt the research about women feeling challenged by connecting with other people in this day and age. Check out the unsolicited remarks from FPF members… it all boils down to developing lasting connections with real people… in FPF’s case, with nearby neighbors.
And, good for him for recognizing that he’s not Joe Average. I know of several (if not most) “local” efforts that are designed by national-focused people with little experience of living in community with neighbors, serving on school committees, running a fundraiser for the volunteer fire dept., etc. And they feel that way.
Many of these “local” online services are built for a national collection of locals, thus losing a degree of authenticity. Just like eating at McDonalds among strangers is a fundamentally different experience than bellying up to the counter of a local diner and talking about the Little League playoffs.
Customers prefer peer reviews to expert’s
According to David Weinberger today…
According to the Center for Media Research:
A recent survey on current attitudes towards customer ratings and reviews by Bazaarvoice and Vizu Corporation, shows that about three out of four shoppers say that it is extremely or very important to read customer reviews before making a purchase, and they prefer peer reviews over expert reviews by a 6-to-1 margin.
Of couse, Bazaarvoice provides customer review capabilities to vendors.
I don’t know about the 6-to-1 spread, but I don’t doubt people’s preference for peer reviews. And we find with Front Porch Forum that folks like reviews from nearby neighbors even better… one of the most common types of posting on the FPF neighborhood forums.
Gannett morphing newspapers toward web
Jeff Howe has an upbeat piece in Wired magazine (7/24/2007) about Gannett’s big changes to bring their newspapers into the internet age.
By March 2006, the pieces were in place. The Web was to become the primary vehicle for news, with frequent, round-the-clock updates. The newsroom would be rechristened the Information Center, while traditional departments like Metro and Business would give way to the Digital and Community Conversation desks. Photographers would be trained to shoot video, which would be posted online. Investigations would no longer be conducted by a coven of professionals working in secret. Instead, they’d be crowdsourced — farmed out to readers who’d join in the detective work. Gannett papers would also become repositories of local information, spilling over with data about everything from potholes to public officials’ salaries. “We must mix our content with professional journalism and amateur contributions,” read one of the PowerPoint slides prepared by Gannett execs. “The future is pro-am.”
Howe goes on to look at several of the new features… mom-focused online social networking, public info databases, “Get Published” areas, etc. At least one of Gannett’s 85 dailies is finding success with one piece…
When cincyMOMS [the Cincinnati Enquirer‘s mom’s social networking site] launched in late January, Mitchell was responsible for seeding its discussion areas with posts and moderating forums. After 12 weeks, the site — a blend of forums and user-generated photos — was receiving 40,000 pageviews a day, and demand for ad space was outstripping supply. Initially, cincyMOMS was projected to bring in $200,000 its first year; it made $386,000 in half that time.
Gannett hopes the popularity of cincyMOMS is a sign that a long-lost demographic is coming back to the fold. Only 27 percent of young women read a daily newspaper, and the proportion in Cincinnati who read the Enquirer is even more anemic. Visitors to cincyMOMS may not be more inclined to pick up the print edition of the paper, but as they flock to the Web, advertisers are happy to follow. And more than half of the cincyMOMS advertisers are new to the Enquirer.
The long Wired article offers some interesting insights into our local Gannett outpost, the Burlington Free Press. Its rate of change has been nothing short of remarkable over the last year given its reputation. It’ll be interesting to see which, if any, of these new offerings survive and thrive.
Of the thousands of messages coursing through Front Porch Forum locally, occasionally someone will reference a conventional Free Press article, perhaps with a weblink… that’s great. Besides that, the only other mentions I can recall are when Free Press employees have plugged the paper’s new web features to their neighbors… oh, and some traditional customers are calling for some kind of neighborhood action to protest lousy delivery service lately. And some comments about a recent cost-cutting dust-up about eliminating free parking for the paper’s well-regarded reporting staff…
“While people are angry,” said one veteran journalist at Vermont’s largest daily newspaper, this week “the prevailing mood is one of disgust.”
Times are changing.
More about FPF on PBS.org
Mark Glaser at PBS.org’s MediaShift wrote about FPF previously and yesterday…
When I put the question to MediaShift readers about where they get neighborhood news, I was inundated by fans of the Front Porch Forum
service in Burlington, Vermont…
Normally I tend to discount these types of write-in campaigns, but I have to admit that I like what Front Porch Forum is doing. The service is currently in a test phase covering 130 neighborhoods around Burlington. You can only sign up for the neighborhood you live in, and then you start getting email newsletters with news tidbits, items for sale, business openings, and more — submitted by people in the neighborhood. They are closed lists that aren’t accessible to the public, and each posting includes the person’s name, mailing address and email address to verify who they are…
It will be interesting to see if this closed approach via email — similar to the closed approach of the early Facebook — will foster a better way of keeping tabs on community news beyond Burlington. And of course, the question remains how to make money off of email lists, and including local businesses in the mix…
Thanks to Mark for the coverage. It’s a fair description of FPF; however, I think the email aspect of our service needn’t be over emphasized. Email is the best primary distribution method for the our audience currently. That’ll change over time. In our flagship neighborhood, 90% of the households subscribe with 50% posting content in the past six months… that includes folks in their 80s on down to teens looking for babysitting jobs. They all use email. They don’t all use RSS, text messaging, Facebook, etc. In a sense, we’re hosting a bunch of private group blogs… each one focused on a neighborhood… but we’re using email for now.
CityVoter making progress
Sounds like this effort is getting traction…
With the probably exception of Yelp, standalone review sites haven’t figured out a way to make money. In the past year, InsiderPages was sold off to CitySearch, and Judy’s Book, famously, changed its model to coupons.
So why would Josh Walker, Forrester’s former head of consumer research, dive into the game with both feet? Walker’s CityVoter, which raised an initial round of $1.1 million from two Boston-area funders, has been in operation since last year, and now has 25 employees.
CityVoter works with local TV stations…
While the site is still branded as “beta,” the lineup of stations, which get local exclusivity, is getting real. CityVoter now has nine stations, 120,000 registered users, and 410,000 votes. It is expecting to launch 25 more stations before the year is out. More importantly, CityVoter has developed relationships with key station groups – rather than landing deals, one station at a time.
Read more on The Local Onliner.
About Blog
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more
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