Hard to believe that Front Porch Forum was launched one year ago this month! The response to this local start-up (focused on its initial pilot area of greater Burlington, VT) has been wonderful and overwhelming. What a privilege to work on this effort with the likes of…
Moving forward, our goals are simple and challenging…
So thanks to each FPF member! And please post messages to your neighborhood forum and encourage those around you to sign up at FrontPorchForum.com Here comes autumn! -Michael and Valerie
Greg Sterling reports today about two spending forecasts for online geotargeted advertising.
eMarketer
2006 $2.1B
2011 $7.8B
30.0% annual growth
VSS
2006 $6.4B
2011 $19.2B
24.6% annual growth
I don’t know why the two estimates differ as much as they do. However, they both show a sizable industry getting bigger. I take this as encouraging news for Front Porch Forum, with it’s neighborhood-specific focus.
Not sure what to make of RottenNeighbor.com. It’s…
the first real estate search engine of its kind that helps you find bad neighbors before you move so you don’t regret the purchase of your new house, home, condo or apartment.
A different approach than Front Porch Forum to say the least.
Grayboxx has been generating some buzz online recently with its impending launch… which happened today. And lo and behold, its first target is our very own Burlington, Vermont. From its press release…
Grayboxx Inc., a Silicon Valley-based online local search firm, today announced that Burlington is the first city to gain access to the company’s unique “neighbor-recommended” local search service. By using patent-pending techniques to accurately determine the community popularity and approval for local businesses, grayboxx.com provides the most meaningful local recommendations on the Web. Grayboxx will roll out its service to other communities across the United States in the coming months.
For people who live outside of the largest metropolitan areas, there are few, if any, online local search options that provide extensive business rankings and recommendations. Grayboxx’s unique approach to local search has enabled it to assemble a critical mass of community feedback on more than 3,000 of Burlington’s businesses. The site features more than 12,000 “neighbor recommendations”, covering everything from antique shops to violin stores.
Wow! Burlington’s population is about 38,000… a little more than 12,000 households. Here’s how it works, according to the company…
Grayboxx’s innovative PreferenceScoring™ engine is able to translate everyday actions people take with or about businesses into meaningful expressions of business popularity and quality. For example, when a user checks out a restaurant online, makes a reservation, and then a week later makes another reservation, this can be considered as a positive recommendation of the restaurant.
Online reservations are just one of the many methods used by the powerful new local search engine to assess the top recommendations in Burlington. Grayboxx works by processing anonymous information from a variety of sources to create implicit neighbor recommendations in more than 6,000 yellow page categories in Burlington or in any city. This approach differs greatly from that of current search giants, which rely on manually entered user reviews for their recommendations.
This sounds interesting. Wisdom from boiling down databases… the final dish depends on the ingredients (data) and the chef’s technique (Grayboxx’s software). Let’s see how it tastes…
The following are samples of grayboxx’s top results for businesses and services in Burlington, as ranked by the Burlington community.
The top neighbor-recommended “jewelers” in Burlington are:
* Fremeau Jewelers, with 34 neighbor recommendations
* Von Bargen’s Jewelry, with 12 recommendations
* Hannoush Jewelers, with 3 recommendationsThe top three neighbor-recommended “taxi” services in Burlington are:
* Benway’s Taxi, with 38 neighbor recommendations
* Yellow Cab, with 8 recommendations
* Airport Taxi, with 5 recommendationsA search for “computer repair” in Burlington returns with the following:
* ReCycle North, with 47 neighbor recommendations
* Computer Rescue Squad, with 7 recommendations
* Pine Computers, with 4 recommendations
I just plugged in several other items… groceries, computer dealers, newspapers, shoes, pizza… maybe some of the databases they hope to mine are not quite ripe or fresh. As a local, I haven’t had one search produce what I would call “good advice from a neighbor.” Makes me wonder about the chef’s secret recipe (mysterious ranking criteria)… hard to trust when initial tests come up with what I’m seeing.
I know Grayboxx is taking aim at smaller markets, but this seems more suited for large anonymous metro areas. If I didn’t know anyone local to ask for a reliable and a reasonably priced taxi option, I’d be happy for this kind of service.
Burlington, and all of Vermont, is so reasonably scaled, that lots of this kind of information is near at hand. Ask a few co-workers, friends, etc. Indeed, this is one of the most common types of messages posted among neighbors on Front Porch Forum. People get real “neighbor recommendations” in Burlington everyday this way.
At this point, I’d rather ask a couple hundred neighbors for a computer repair recommendation through FPF than turn to this kind of service. Or I’d sooner take a peek at the local successful reader survey that our weekly alternative paper runs, the much coveted Daisies, by Seven Days. But Grayboxx may be more attractive than some of the other non-local data-driven behemoths stomping through the local online scenes these days. I’ll have to keep trying it… fun to have it here first.
And thanks to Greg Sterling for the lead.
Phyl Newbeck wrote an interesting piece for the Burlington Free Press on August 21, 2007 about a local online effort within Front Porch Forum‘s initial pilot area.
Jericho and Underhill collaborate in ways that few Vermont towns do.
They share a library district, a park district and a land trust. The two towns go even further in their collaboration by having a communal Web page and listserv known as “Two Towns Online.”
Although each town has a formal, municipal Web site, Two Towns Online provides additional interactive applications like collaborative document creation and a message board. Front Porch Forum offers three neighborhood-based listservs for Jericho and Underhill, but Two Towns Online founder Toby Brown feels that Two Towns Online is not redundant because it serves a larger audience and is the result of a group effort.
Two Towns On-Line wasn’t always a collaborative project. For almost a decade, Brown, a Web production manager and native of Jericho, was the sole force behind the page. That changed in 2005 when Jan DeVries, a retired businessman from Holland and newcomer to the town of Underhill, offered to provide additional applications such as Mediawiki.
Franco Gatti and Kelly King joined the duo, and the group formed a nonprofit organization and opened a dedicated bank account for the page. Gatti was born in Italy and moved to Jericho in 1994.
He retired from IBM with a desire to devote his time and energy to local projects and is responsible for the page’s virtual gallery for local artists and artisans. King is a home-schooling mother who is a lifetime resident of Jericho.
The Two Towns Online board is somewhat frustrated by the limited use that residents give the listserv. One hundred and thirty people are signed up, but conversation is limited. Still Brown is pleased with his efforts.
“It’s not a wild success, but it has become a community asset,” he said.
Brown sees the limited use as “reflective of our society where people aren’t tuned in to participating in the civil realm.”
The page may not be fully utilized as of yet but it is, as DeVries notes, most definitely designed in the Vermont tradition as it has no billboards and accepts no advertising.
Toby, Jan, Franco and Kelly deserve praise for all the work they’ve done… lots of good stuff on their site.
For the record, Front Porch Forum hosts four neighborhood forums covering 100% of Jericho and Underhill towns. To date, about 140 households have joined. None of these neighborhood forums are among our top tier in terms of member count or message traffic… but they are all getting there.
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