Category Archives: Front Porch Forum

Need Movie/Book Review? Ask Neighbors

Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 by • 1 comment

Here’s a new use of Front Porch Forum’s service from a member in the Oakledge Neighborhood Forum…

I’ll bet some of the folks in this neighborhood are reading some good books and seeing films and plays regularly.  It would be really interesting if folks would write a few words for the neighborhood forum about a book or film they have really enjoyed and think others shouldn’t miss.  -N.A.

Our mission… helping neighbors connect and foster community within the neighborhood.  This message certainly fits the bill!  Now, I hope she gets some folks to give it a shot.

Social Network Traffic Numbers Inflated?

Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 by • No comments yet

MediaVidea reported recently…

News Item #1: A detailed research from HP reveals that 43% of Facebook messages are spam. Marcus from Plentyoffish dating site puts it correctly that you would similar figures on any other social networking sites.

NewsItem #2: A recent Comscore study reports that 3 out of 10 U.S. Internet users delete cookies, which means that sites may be overestimating audiences by a factor as high as 2.5.

Both pieces of information have implications for advertisers who use cookie-based visitor counting and rates of social networking site usage.

I wonder how accurate this is?  If this ascertain is on target, how widely known is it?  It seems remarkable to me.  It might help explain in part the incredibly positive response to Front Porch Forum we’ve found in our initial service area (greater Burlington, Vermont).  Subscribe to your neighborhood’s forum and you get no spam… just your neighborhood forum in your inbox every few days.  And, our audience is very clear… we have contact information on each one… simple to get an accurate count.  This may also contribute to the initial high level of interest among small local business in sponsoring a variety of our neighborhood forums.

FatDoor on the right path?

Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 by • 3 comments

The Local Onliner previewed FatDoor today… sounds interesting.

The startup crawls the Web for publicly available info (College, job, kids, church, clubs, blogs) and is being designed to provide neighbors with publicly available info about each other so they can establish commonalities from the getgo, rather than sitting in the isolated silos of today’s typical “Bowling Alone” neighborhood.

The site’s motto is “positive social change.” The company hopes that it will help the “neighborhood get stronger, help people develop friendships in their neighborhoods, and become more civic in their involvement in their communities.” It may also be used for more annoying things (telemarketing, real estate pitches etc.) But the site has taken pains to hire a privacy expert to minimize the inherent risks. If it works at all, one imagines it could be a nice complement to something like Zillow, and more dimensional.

FatDoor has some big names and resources behind it, so it’s going somewhere. I’m trying to picture a real-world (vs. virtual) equivalent… tacking everyone’s resume to their front door? Flipping through your neighbor’s mail to see who’s newsletter he’s getting? I like the motto and goals (similar to Front Porch Forum), but I’m not sure this approach will be warmly embraced. I haven’t seen it in action, so hopefully the sense of the site will match up with the promising intent.

Neighbors to the Rescue!

Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007 by • No comments yet

This afternoon a Jericho Corners member posted a call for help from her neighbors. Problem solved in a few hours! She just sent in this follow up message titled “We’re Saved!”

The neighbor’s have come to our rescue! Thank you Tina and John for the emergency load of firewood since our furnace broke down and another storm is due tonight. And thanks to the others of you who called with concern. – Can’t tell you how much it means to my daughter and me. That false (but scary) perception of “isolation” has been lifted. We feel a lot better… and a lot warmer! Thanks again. -P.M.

Another great use of Front Porch Forum.

Average Age of Social Networkers?

Posted on Friday, April 13, 2007 by • No comments yet

MediaVidea offers this today:

Rolling Stone will one of the first mainstream magazines entering into the social networking field... Comscore analysis shows that:

– More than half of Myspace visitors are now 35 and older.
– 71% of the Friendster’s 1 million user base is 35 and above.
– 50% of Facebook users are 25-plus, despite that it has now almost become mandatory for new college and high school students to register there.

Aiming an aging demographic is a smart idea. They have the buyer and stating power, vis- -vis the fickle younger crowd.

Adult-oriented social networking sites are already up and running, Multiply for example.

Next up: A social network fro Esquire and New Yorker magazines, perhaps?

Front Porch Forum members appear to range from teens to 80s. Since entire households tend to subscribe, I’m hard pressed to guess an average age.

Forum as Evening’s Entertainment

Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007 by • No comments yet

I just snipped this comment from a member of the ONE Central Neighborhood Forum in Burlington:

I loved the comments tonight. I used to read the personals when I was lonely. Instead now, I go right to the forum. Then sometimes, like tonight I just laugh happily all the way up to brush my teeth. Jason you are really cracking me up. Despite all the issues in the Old North End, I like being a part of this group. It really fills me up.

Legislators on the Vermont Autobahn

Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007 by • No comments yet

With thousands of local members contributing to Front Porch Forum, every day brings something new… an especially insightful or inspiring post, etc. Here’s a beaut that will be published in the next issue of the Huntington Neighborhood Forum.

Where to start? I had to go to southern VT on business yesterday and on the way back had the pleasure to be a part of the mass exodus from our fine capital, Montpelier. All our elected officials were headed home… They get a nice distinct license plate so it’s easy to spot them. I had the cruise set at 70 MPH ( at 65 MPH you risk getting hit from behind). I was being passed like I was standing still!

All the cars had only one person in them… WOW

All sorts of things come to mind while this was happening… I’ll leave that up for your imagination. Well, maybe I should point that imagination in a positive direction by saying this:

Lead by example, Carpool, set up transportation hubs so folks can park and ride, make them carpool. You’re an elected official. This is how you get into work.

We have to start somewhere why not start from the top. =-) JIM

James Fecteau
Huntington Neighborhood Forum

[Thanks to Jim for his permission to publish this beyond his neighborhood forum.]

Missing Child updates on Front Porch Forum

Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007 by • No comments yet

Members have been using Front Porch Forum for neighborhood watch type activities for some time. Here’s something similar. Burlington police use a nationally available service that automatically calls all phone numbers within one or more neighborhoods to alert the community about a missing child… wonderful use of technology. (I can’t imagine how terrible this situation must be for the people caught up in it.)
The downside… after receiving this alarming call from a machine, with few details (you don’t know who the kid is typically… just that a neighbor boy or girl of certain description is gone), you get nothing more… no follow up. No “we found Billy and everything is okay.” The service can’t be used that way, only for emergencies.

So it was interesting to read the minutes from the March 2007 Neighborhood Planning Assembly meeting for Ward 5 today:

Corporal Fabiani informed the NPA of a localized “Child is missing” alert that was activated recently and was successful in finding the child safely. Currently there is no ability to make a similar phone call to cancel the alert. Suggestions were made that the Front Porch Forum could be used to alert neighbors of the status. Local TV and radio stations are already used.

That’s another great use of our neighborhood forums, and, in fact, this has been done at least twice recently, once in the South End and once in the Old North End to good effect. Put the word out on the forum and it spreads across the neighborhood.

New Forum Member Gets It

Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007 by • No comments yet

A new member of the Centennial Neighborhood Forum in Burlington, Vermont, writes today to her neighbors:

I’m very glad this exists… and it looks like many people are using it. The forum seems like a great supplement to “front porch” conversations, especially since the snow and cold often keeps us indoors (or playing far from the front porch)!  Looking forward to conversations and meeting many more neighbors.

That’s what Front Porch Forum is all about!

Forums induce behavior change directly?

Posted on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 by • No comments yet

As I reported in a recent post, some neighborhood forums are being used to elicit action from local leaders. In one case, the ONE East Neighborhood Forum’s ongoing discussion about college student noise and poor behavior as neighbors has been raging for weeks. And the City of Burlington and University of Vermont are now responding… that’s great!

And now another result… apparently the students themselves are starting to respond. Those who live off-campus in this neighborhood of lovely old homes (many of which have been split into multi-unit student dwellings) are joining Front Porch Forum too. They’re reading what the permanent residents are writing… about the late-night awakenings, the broken bottles, the “my kids’ swingset is not a toilet” remarks… it’s all starting to sink in for some students. This is a real neighborhood, full of real people, real families… time to shape up or move this behavior elsewhere.

I’ve been told of group discussions among students. One will say something like… “only students live here so we can do whatever we want… right?” Someone fires up the laptop and produces dozens of ticked off neighbors’ messages from Front Porch Forum. “Oh… I didn’t know. I’d never act this way back home.”

Ahh… to be 21 again. I, for one, didn’t know which way was up at that point in my life. [For the record, I now know which way “up” is… but with none of our young children consistently sleeping through the night, that’s all I’m willing to commit to right now.]

So, in addition to providing a place to vent and a way to organize neighbors to get an official response, Front Porch Forum appears to be directly effecting the parties involved… a civilizing impact.

P.S. I hear from some “official” type folks who have been working on this issue for years that they now can use Front Porch Forum postings as leverage to pry their higher-ups into action.

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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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