Yearly Archives: 2007
Yelvington on Backfence and Front Porch
Steve Yelvington writes about Backfence‘s recent closure…
We still don’t know the right scale for doing this sort of thing, and that scale may actually be shifting as more people sign up for cheap broadband and become comfortable with creating and not just consuming content. Backfence cofounder Mark Potts once speculated in a conversation that the right physical community size is under 50,000. We’ve had great debates about that where I work; one point of view says a local high school district can serve as a useful proxy for defining a natural community, but your mileage may vary.
People settle into community levels… think concentric circles. Maybe 150 friends in the inner circle. More like 2,000 in the neighborhood… the elementary school district. Maybe 50,000 is the next hop… the high school level. And so on. Capital wants to centralize and standardize across as many people as possible… think USAToday. People tend toward decentralization and diversity… think distinct neighborhoods or yore with their own corner stores, clubs, ethnic flavors, etc. Front Porch Forum is designed for the neighborhood level.
A successful community model and a successful business model are not the same thing. The tricky part is going to involve finding the intersection. Something like Front Porch Forum might have a great community model but never be able to make a significant profit, or vice versa. Or the right business model might involve delivery of a print component, something many Web-centric developers might overlook or avoid.
With 20% of our pilot city subscribing in our first half-year via word-of-mouth, I remain optimistic about FPF’s evolving business model. Time will tell!
Everybody underestimates how hard and how expensive it is to build a powerful brand at a geographic community level. If you went down the street in one of Backfence’s markets and knocked on doors, how many people would have a strong, clear, positive notion of what Backfence was all about and why they should use it? This is one place where incumbent, offline media may have a great advantage, although in many cases it can’t deliver the message to the targets of greatest opportunity (nonconsumers).
Good point.
Neighborhood Mapping Tool
Glenn reports on AnyGeo today…
Maponics, LLC announced today the full release of Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries™. Until now, websites offering local search, including social marketing, real estate and Web 2.0 sites, have had to provide search results based upon ZIP Code or city name. By integrating Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries, search results for hundreds of cities can now be filtered and even mapped by universally accepted city neighborhood boundaries. The result – more relevant local search results, more loyal site visitors and higher ad revenue. More about the dataset… Covering hundreds of the top US cities, the Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries database includes all latitude and longitude coordinates for each neighborhood polygon. It is specifically designed for easy integration into Google™, Yahoo!®, or Microsoft® map mash-ups or into back-end data analysis applications.
The idea of mapping by neighborhood is a very clever one and I believe offers amazing opportunities to the users of these data. Given the social and economic characteristics that residents of a “neighborhood” share this could indeed truly become a very powerful and useful data product… I can’t wait to see where this goes as we see apps developed based on neighborhood data. See www.maponics.com
Front Porch Forum has created polygons for neighborhood boundaries in our pilot area (Burlington, VT) and it’s more art than science. Some are obvious to everyone, other areas defy consensus.
Zillow launches neighborhood pages
Zillow.com, a big real estate site, today launched its new Neighborhood Pages…
We’ve created more than 6,500 new Neighborhood Pages in 134 cities across the country (with more to come). We’ve seeded these pages with some pretty amazing demographic data—including telling characteristics about the residents of these neighborhoods. However, the bulk of the content on the Neighborhood Pages we have left up to you, the Zillow community. Use the neighborhood discussion forums to meet your neighbors, talk about local news, publicize events like garage sales and get the inside scoop by asking questions of residents who know the area best. You can also share your photos of the neighborhood and check out the real estate in your area – from homes for sale to local Make Me Move prices to the most talked-about homes. To find a Neighborhood Page, you can access via any one of the 70+ million Home Detail pages and look for the link right beneath the address.
Bloggers tracking this kind of thing question whether people will come and populate the site with their postings. Time will tell. From The Real Estate Bloggers…
Now the problem with all forums or microsites that require user input to thrive is gaining that critical mass. There is no way Zillow is going to be able to staff people to manage each locales page without throwing big money at it. And Topix has the automated local news side of hyperlocal figured out and they are muddling along.
What will determine the critical mass is if enough people will come and stay to discuss local issues on a regular basis. Some real estate agents will, but to be honest I am not sure that homebuyers want to sit around and watch real estate agents talk shop. And for the real estate agents to come to Zillow and change their voice so what they write is a big leap, if they wanted to do that they would have a blog and be dominating the local SERPs that way.
Topix focusing on local forums
Fascinating interview today by Mark Glaser with the leadership of Topix and how this online news aggregator is now focusing on local forums.
When local news aggregator Topix decided to set up online forums last December for every city and small town in America, they figured the forums would be a loss leader. After all, online forums have a bad reputation for unfettered discussion, gossip and slander, leading most news organizations to abandon them altogether online. And people on forums are usually more focused on the discussion than on clicking on ads.
But for Topix, the forums have transformed the site from a simple search engine and news aggregator into a series of online water cooler discussions that riff off the news of the day. And with the popularity of forums, Topix has a more engaged audience that stays on the site longer. Plus, Topix is bringing in even more money by serving up forums to newspaper partner sites and sharing ad revenues with them.
Clay Shirky and software development
I had the pleasure of chatting with Clay Shirky about Front Porch Forum after a talk he gave a couple months ago. Now, I just watched the video of his presentation at Supernova 2007 and the following quote struck me…
Standing from today, looking towards the future, you will make more accurate predictions about software, and, in this web-driven world, about services, if you ask yourself not “what’s the business model?” but rather “do the people who like it take care of each other?” That turns out to be the better predictor of longevity.
Now, he was talking mostly about open source software development, but I find encouragement for our efforts with Front Porch Forum too. In fact, the people who like FPF do often take care of each other… as neighbors supporting neighbors. In a way, this cuts to the core of our early success.
New FPF ads in Seven Days
Seven Days will run some new Front Porch Forum ads in coming print issues…
S. Burlington Night Out Aug. 7
South Burlington, VT will partake in the 24th annual National Night Out celebration on August 7. The Free Press reported yesterday that the organizers are looking for volunteers. Interested? Contact Cpl. Ron Piper (845-4625). Also from the Free Press…
National Night Out serves to heighten crime and drug prevention awareness while generating support for, and participation in, local crime prevention efforts, said Sgt. Thomas A. Fraga of the South Burlington Police Department. It also aims to strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships and send a message to criminals that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back.
South Burlington will start off the event with a movie and family bingo Aug. 6 at the rotary band shell at Dorset Park. The event at the park will continue at noon Aug. 7 with pony rides, inflatables, and displays from businesses, nonprofits and crime prevention agencies.
The parade will begin at 6 p.m. from the University Mall and progress down Dorset Street until it ends at Dorset Park an hour later. After the parade, the winners of the South Burlington Talent Show and other local groups will perform. A fireworks display at 9:15 p.m. will conclude the event.
This event meshes well with the mission of Front Porch Forum.
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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