Category Archives: Local Online

Craigslist didn’t kill Newspapers

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 by • No comments yet

I just read an interesting article from the U.K. about Craigslist, based on an interview with CEO Jim Buckmaster. On daily newspapers in the United States:

“I think it’s exaggerated to say that Craigslist has had a devastating impact on classifieds revenue,” said Buckmaster. “Newspapers as an industry are still twice as profitable as the average United States industry.”

“Journalism as practiced at newspapers has been hurt by an excess of money over the years as you’ve seen newspapers bought and sold and consolidated into large chains run by corporate managers to maximise profit, and increasingly over decades have resorted to running wire stories, putting an ever-greater proportion of advertising into their newspapers and shying away from writing hard-hitting stories about corruption in high places,” said Buckmaster. “The financial position of newspapers has not declined, it has more plateaued.”

And on dot.com business models:

“Our goal is to maximise utility for users, so we concentrate on doing what users ask us to do and little else. We do want to run a healthy business and we do have a healthy business, but beyond that maximising profits and revenues has never been a primary goal. It’s unfathomable to the financial community and Wall Street, it’s antithetical to their whole world view, it’s sacrilegious.”

It is in the top 10 English language websites by traffic, it serves six billion pages a month to 10 million users, yet it only employs 23 staff. It is those low costs which have kept it in business.

“It was fairly ironic, 100 per cent of dotcoms were geared toward trying to achieve an IPO and make a lot of money and 99 per cent or more of those companies went bust without making a nickel,” said Buckmaster. “Craigslist was never about money, and yet we were one of the very few that came through the bust and have done well year after year.”

Classified-type postings within neighborhood forums continue to grow at Front Porch Forum. I’ve heard from many of our members that when they failed to get a response to classified ads posted in the local paper and craigslist, they’ve turned to Front Porch Forum. They post a note to their neighbors and receive 3-4 responses within 24 hours. Doing business with a neighbor vs. a stranger is a big difference. Would you rather buy a used car for your teenager from some stranger 45-minutes away, or from the neighbor around the corner? Plenty of examples on our Testimonials page and past blog entries.

Winooski turns to Front Porch Forum

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 by • No comments yet

Andy Potter filed a wonderful story for Channel 3 News tonight about how the City of Winooski is turning to Front Porch Forum. Video below. Text here and on the WCAX website.

Forum Members answer Call to Shovel

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 by • 1 comment

Dozens of Front Porch Forum members requested help from their neighbors in the wake of the blizzard… most in need of snow removal. Others posted generous offers to help. We also were glad to help spread the word about Operation Snow Shovel… apparently to good effect:

Thanks so, so much for posting the message about Operation Snow Shovel throughout Burlington. The response was incredible! Can you believe that I’ve heard from 57 people willing to volunteer to shovel? 57! (That’s in addition to the 33 permanent volunteers who shovel for a particular person each time it snows– many of them were recruited through Front Porch Forum, too.) A large percentage of volunteers said they’d heard about the need through their neighborhood forum.

As of right now, every single elderly or disabled person in need of help that contacted OSS has been accommodated. And those I’ve yet to hear from will get help quickly. What a wonderful resource these forums are! Many, many thanks!

Angie Spong
The Center for Community and Neighborhoods

WCAX covered this story on the evening news too.

Citizen Media Survey

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 by • No comments yet

Wow! I just waded through the new study about online citizen journalism by the Knight Citizen News Network at the University of Maryland (thanks to the Local Onliner for the link). They surveyed a gaggled of local news/blog sites and wrote up their findings.

Front Porch Forum is a second cousin to this type of site, but not a sibling. Some comparisons:

Overall there was little accountability built in for content contributors: 73% of all respondents said their sites didn’t require users to register; 69% said a valid e-mail was not even required before posting. Only 40% of 141 respondents said their sites required contributors to use their real names; 60% said their sites allowed either anonymous posts or the use of “screen” names.

Front Porch Forum requires first and last names, street address and email address.

Asked whether their sites edited contributions before they were posted, 40% of 149 replies said content was edited; 48% said it was not and 12% just didn’t know. Half (50% of 131 replies) said offensive or inappropriate content was filtered out before posting. Most respondents (66% of 119 replies) said their sites removed offensive or inappropriate content after it was posted; but 17% of the respondents said such content was not removed, and 17% just didn’t know.

Front Porch Forum does not edit content, but it does screen all postings, add headlines and clean up formatting.

Half the respondents reported that 26 or fewer people overall were contributing content or skills to their enterprise, although site operators say many of those are just occasional contributors.

When we analyzed our flagship neighborhood forum that covers an area of 350 households, we found that about:
-300 households subscribe (after six years)
-200 households have posted at least one message
-100 households have posted at least six messages

For the past five months we’ve been hosting 130 neighborhood forums covering the Burlington, Vermont area. More than 15% of the city’s households have joined already. I’m not sure how many of those people are contributing, but I’d guess that it’s significantly greater than on many of the surveyed sites.

Based on their own definitions of “success,” 73% of our survey respondents pronounced their sites to be successful.

Well, it’s early, but I’ll give Front Porch Forum a thumbs up on the “success” question at this point. It seems most of the sites in the survey focus on success around journalistic goals of informing and engaging the public. Our purpose is to help neighbors connect and foster community within neighborhoods. Local news from our members to their neighbors contributes to that process, but it’s not the end goal.

Does anyone get paid? Of the 78 who replied: 33% said their sites had no paid workers; 33% said only one or two workers got paid.

We’re in the 33%. 😉

Using Neighborhood Forums to Broadcast

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 by • No comments yet

Front Porch Forum gets a steady stream of requests from local nonprofit organizations, schools and the like asking that we post their announcements across all of the neighborhood forums that we host. Regardless of how important or compelling their work, we must decline. Simply, our members don’t join to get a flood of public service announcements in their inboxes.

However, if they get an occasional such message about a fundraiser for a local youth center or a note about Girl Scout cookies AND it comes from a neighbor, then that seems to be okay and even appreciated.

So, a growing number of local groups are learning how to work with Front Porch Forum. They send their message to their list of supporters, staff, directors, etc. and ask each of those people to post the announcement on their own neighborhood forum. In this way, the message reaches a good number of people AND it’s coming from a nearby neighbor so it gets a bit more attention.

I noticed a posting last week started popping up all across Chittenden County. An alternative school was spreading the word about their annual open house, and the parents were sending out the message, each to his/her neighborhood forum. Turns out, this was the second time they tried this method, as one of the parents noted:

Glad to hear that the school community is making good use of the forums — it is amazing how many more people knew just what I was talking about (as compared to the fall). Very exciting!

Another sign that Front Porch Forum is growing and that people are tuning in!

Small steps toward Neighborliness

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 by • No comments yet

Kevin Harris writes this week:

I’m trying to write a paper about neighbourliness and have been thinking about the reciprocity of acts of neighbouring… research has found that… sometimes one neighbour helps out another without getting much in return, and keeps doing so.

However, the researchers only included… “favours” in their study, and it seems to me that other, intangible forms of interpersonal behaviour which are in some way supportive – for instance a sympathetic chat on the doorstep to provide comfort in the face of bad news, or the sharing of information about local services – are likely to be viewed by neighbours as valid contributions to the same exchange relationship.

Many years ago I recall rushing out of my house shouting when I saw from my window a neighbour’s toddler stepping into the road, as the mother was getting the shopping from her car. For this simple act I was rewarded almost immediately with a bottle of wine from the shopping bag. It was clear that I had to accept it, not least because there was probably a confused swelling wave of guilt as well as gratitude in her expression of thanks. But it was also, of course, a recognition of the non-obligatory, but potentially vital, role of neighbour.

This begins to get at what’s unfolding in some of the areas served by Front Porch Forum‘s more successful neighborhood forums. Some how the accumulation of lots of little items are creating an environment more welcoming of overt “good neighbor” acts, like baking a cake for a neighbor in need of boost. That’s an odd move if you’ve only interacted with the person once or twice, but is more reasonable if you’re both subscribed to the same small and lively neighborhood forum.

Need Feedback? Ask 100 Neighbors

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 by • No comments yet

Online “communities of interest” have long afforded people the chance to poll their colleagues about an issue or idea. I’m guessing a good portion of this has been limited to professionals talking to their peers, and highly involved amateurs chatting amongst themselves in their circles.

So it’s interesting that this past week we’ve seen lots of John and Jane Q. Public posting notes in their neighborhood forums looking for feedback and/or action from their neighbors. Some samples from Front Porch Forum:

1. A physical therapist in the Prospect Parkway Neighborhood Forum asked her neighbors for feedback on their experiences with PT. She edits a state PT newsletter and hopes to use the input there.

2. A local bakery runs an annual fundraiser whereby customers vote for a single charity out of a dozen or so candidates. The winner gets to be “baker for the day” working in the shop and taking home the proceeds. Last year’s winner (King Street Youth Center, I think) earned $3,000 for its neighborhood programs. This week, people all over town are plugging their favorite nonprofit on their neighborhood forums and urging their neighbors to go vote.

3. A food critic for a local paper opened a channel to the 100 or so neighbors on her forum, asking for story leads. She’s not the first reporter to tune into her neighborhood forum for tips, although she may be the first one to formally ask.

4. Elisa Nelson worked with a city official to place a brief survey on several Burlington neighborhood forums, gauging people’s sense of allowable new-house size in established neighborhoods, leading into the city’s zoning re-write (i.e., should we allow someone to build a house that is 25% larger than its neighbors? 100% bigger?). More than 5% of people completed and returned the survey.

5.  A South End parent created an online petition about changing the start time at Burlington High School by ten minutes to better mesh with the public transit schedule.  She posted a note in her neighborhood forum a day or two ago, and now it’s been posted by other people across 5-10 forums in town, reaching thousands of people.

I wonder what someone will think of next?

Front Porch Forum in the News

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 by • No comments yet

Many local media outlets in and around Burlington, Vermont have covered Front Porch Forum since our launch last fall. The latest include: The Williston Observer, Hinesburg Record, Colchester Sun, Charlotte Citizen, Islander, Mountain Gazette, and Seven Days. Each of these pieces can be found at or through our media page.

And CCTV Channel 17 is re-airing Richard Kemp’s half-hour Near & Far show about Front Porch Forum this week:

Wed, Feb 7, 2007 at 9:34:00 PM
Thu, Feb 8, 2007 at 2:34:00 AM
Thu, Feb 8, 2007 at 8:34:00 AM
Thu, Feb 8, 2007 at 2:34:00 PM

This show is also available in video or audio-only here. I recommend the 2:34 AM viewing. 😉

Neighbors doing it for Themselves

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 by • No comments yet

Eight Burlington residents showed up on a chilly day late last week to distribute Front Porch Forum flyers door-to-door throughout the Old North End and hill section north of Pearl St. in Burlington, Vermont.  A huge thanks to Rob, Dani, Craig, Erica, Devin, Melissa and Deb.  Most are AmeriCorps volunteers.  Deb lives in the area we covered and is a Realtor.

About 100 households in that area have subscribed in the few days since the flyering.  If past experience is any indicator, we can expect this outreach effort to continue to bear fruit for weeks and even months.  And thanks too to Vantage Press for cutting a deal on the flyers.

How many Neighbors does it take to…

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 by • No comments yet

I love the Local Onliner! Here’s another interesting post from today. My answer to Peter Krasilovsky’s refrigerator question below… “Yes, Front Porch Forum.”

Krillion, a startup with deep pockets… launched the first iteration of its “localized search engine” today. The highly attractive, ad-supported service is kicking off with a dedicated appliance search… Krillion is crawling national retailer feeds for appliance availability, store location and sales info. Retailers include Home Depot, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Ikea, Sears (and in the Bay Area, Orchard Supply Hardware). In addition to providing very good product and price information, Krillion provides a click-to-call capability.

Competitors such as ShopLocal, Yokel, Nearby Now and CNET provide similar services. ShopLocal, for one, would seem to have more data sources, since it sucks in all the retailer info from its newspaper partners; Run of Press and circular ads; as well as from a Web partnership with shopping.com.

For now, Krillion says its crawling is far more extensive than any of its competitors, with 275 million pages of relevant local search results displaying local product information for major appliances in every burg in the U.S.  “It is an important piece of the local search puzzle,” says [former RHD executive Simon] Greenman. He adds that most local results are like “Swiss cheese.” Greenman also says that the focus on national retailers is smart since the focus stays on big ticket items, and “you get scale issues when you go local.”

But a question I ask is: isn’t there a way to feature both the big box stores and the local merchants? Sure, Krillion turns up an impressive number of GE Profile refrigerators from several big box stores. ShopLocal, meanwhile, only turns up one (from AM Royal). But one of the biggest (and cheapest) stores in my hometown of Carlsbad,CA is actually Pacific Sales. They advertise heavily in local papers. Can’t someone find it?

Front Porch Forum’s answer? Ask your neighbors! Questions like this get asked all the time on our neighborhood forums. “Where’s the best place to buy a new refrigerator?” The writer will hear about the local versions of Pacific Sales, along with comments about service and other issues he might not be considering… “look at the Energy Star ratings” or “check out RecycleNorth for great deals on slightly used models.” Or, even… “ask for the manager, Herb, and tell him I sent you.”

Sure, research online, but then ask the neighbors and SHOP LOCAL! (By the way, that means locally owned retailers.)

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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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