Millions of dollars are flowing into dot.com start-ups that provide the public a place to read and write reviews on just about anything local… restaurants, stores, etc. Some include: insiderpages.com, judysbook.com, riffs.com, yelp.com, and zipingo.com. Blogosphere comments swirl around their relative merits and their mangement ups and downs… hard to hear the true tune through the din.
Some of the comments seen recently: Rahul Pathak, Naffziger’s Net, Greg Sterling, Andy Sack, TechCrunch and another. It goes on and on, of course. Where’s there’s money invested, there’s commentary.
Front Porch Forum does local review too, but it’s a different model… the reviews are requested and then the reviews come from nearby neighbors. So (1) the reviews are demand driven, and (2) there’s credibility because the advice is coming from the person around the corner with his/her real identity provided. And this is only one of many uses that our neighborhood forums are supporting… classifieds, community organizing, news, etc. It all adds up to helping neighbors connect and foster community within neighborhoods.
In our first city (Burlington, VT), we’re hosting 130 adjacent neighborhood forums that in sum cover the entire metro-area. Five to ten percent of the local households have joined in our first few months with dozens of neighborhoods in the 20-40% range and a couple exceeding 90% already. And it’s all driven by word of mouth and a spinkle of local media attention.
David Wilcox writes about changes in the field of local online and links to several examples in England, France and the United States:
The early models of local online communities – like Oncom – aimed to replicated physical proximity online. “Please come to our your space and contribute ….” Some local interests did, many didn’t, and it proved difficult to get a sustainable mix of funding, advertising, and volunteer effort.
I submitted a comment to his blog about Front Porch Forum… a new model that showing early promise.
Kevin Harris writes from England:
The Sunday Times had this article the other day, about a report to the Whitehall Wellbeing Working Group, which suggests that the attempt to quantify a personal “sense of wellbeing” is part of a move by all the main political parties to go beyond purely financial measures of wellbeing in setting goals for policy. Well anyway, it claims that people who take the time to chat over the fence to their neighbours tend to be happier.
Front Porch Forum‘s mission is to help neighbors connect and foster community within neighborhoods. It seems from our experience that the simple act of chatting over the fence makes a huge difference in people’s lives and in the well being of a community. Our online forums get the conversation flowing and, when things are working well, that spills over into face-to-face interaction.
For the past couple days a group of old friends, now spread across the country, have exchanged views about global climate change, Al Gore’s movie, and the like. These are dear friends who I don’t really have a chance to connect with anymore, so the exchange was welcomed… even if the topic is a tough one.
Then Margie wrote “does anyone mind if I set up a Yahoo Group for us?” To which I replied “I’ll join, but I’ll bet dollar to donuts that this move will kill the conversation.” “Why?” she asked.
Good question, but I know it’s not uncommon. What is it about Yahoo Groups that seems so appealing when first suggested to help some people communicate, but then often sees the group and it’s postings dry up into an online ghost town? What percentage of Yahoo Groups are dead or dying? How much opportunity is lost?
Another friend in our little crew, Naomi, chimed in “I can’t deal with anything complicated I have to sign up for.” Well that covers a big part of it… Yahoo Groups is not user friendly. Keep in mind that Naomi’s been using a computer most every day for the past 15 years that I’ve known her.
Some folks ask about Front Porch Forum… isn’t it just Yahoo Groups for neighborhoods? No. Not really. It’s simpler, easier to use for the average neighbor, and designed to fulfill our mission… to help neighbors connect and foster community within neighborhoods. Yahoo Groups seems to be designed to be all things to all people… an impressive feat of engineering, but not the best tool if you’re looking to make your neighborhood a great place to live.
Kind of like a Swiss Army knife vs. a screw driver. Need an all-in-one tool that can get the job done in lots of settings? Swiss Army/Yahoo Groups makes sense. Or, do you have a specialized task in mind… driving 100 screws or connecting with your neighbors and fostering community? Then you want the dedicated tool… Front Porch Forum (or the screw driver… you pick).
On second thought, make that a Swiss Army knife that capable folks like Naomi find too hard to pry open.
Peter Krasilovsky packs a lot into his ten brief trends from 2006 for local online. Nearly each of his points supports Front Porch Forum’s position, so check out his full list. Some snippets:
Google and Yahoo have… 70 percent [of local search]. All the others belong in a subset. But the subset, of course, can be lucrative too.
How fast will Google and Yahoo migrate beyond local search, impacting classifieds, brand/display and Yellow Pages. It ought to take awhile.
Sites that protect local positions should get some traction.
Google-style, self-serve [ad sales] solutions will creep up on the industry faster than expected.
We’ll see a lot of localizing [from national advertisers] in 2007.
What surprises me is that the Yellow Pages companies haven’t bothered to buy [local social networks, and ratings/review sites]. Yet.
It’s no secret that the use of online mail lists for neighborhoods is growing, especially, it seems, in more tech-savvy areas. Friends report their widespread use around Austin, TX, for example. And, this weekend, a compelling article by Kathleen Sullivan for the San Francisco Chronicle probes the adoption of Yahoo and Google Groups by neighborhoods all across the Bay area. Kathleen writes:
Thousands of Bay Area residents… have become members of online communities devoted to their neighborhoods, using free services offered by Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and other companies. The groups have attracted renters and homeowners living in condominiums, townhouses, apartments, single-family homes and planned communities.
David Kopp, senior director of Yahoo Groups, said it’s hard to estimate how many people in the Bay Area are chatting about their neighborhoods using its service, because most groups choose to be categorized by subject, not by geography. Some choose not to be listed at all. Many Bay Area neighborhood groups are included in Yahoo’s Cultures & Community category, which lists 700 groups in California. Neighborhood-focused groups can also be found in its Regional and Family & Home categories.
These groups have some design elements in common:
Kopp said most local groups choose the “membership required” option. “They want people in the local area to feel safe and comfortable sharing information and opinions with other members of their local communities,” he said.
[One neighborhood organizer says] “Since we don’t meet over the back fence or in the front yard, we can use this message system to ask for resources, like best cell phone service, set up carpools, find lost pets and more,” she wrote on the group’s home page. “All our responses will be kept in an archive that only members can access. That way, if someone has already replied to ‘What is the city phone number for potholes,’ you can just check the archive.”
Good or bad news for Front Porch Forum? Great news. This is more confirmation of the pent up demand for this kind of service. While Yahoo and Google Groups are dominating giants, there’s room for some start-ups with a different formula to slide in. And, the start-up with just the right recipe might find some surprising success… I know we’re getting some exciting early results. One can dream, eh?
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