Category Archives: Social Networking
NY Times covers LifeAt and others
Bob Tedeschi wrote in the New York Times today about LifeAt, meettheneighbors.org and i-neighbors.org… three services taking aim at online social networking for neighbors. About LifeAt (see my recent post)…
Matthew Goldstein, LifeAt’s chief operating officer, said the company is only now completing its advertising strategy. For now, the company, based in Brooklyn, is surviving on the roughly $6,000 it receives from each building that signs up for the service. It does not charge the buildings yearly fees.
More than 335 buildings have joined since LifeAt began in March. About 600 more buildings are scheduled to introduce LifeAt Web sites by year’s end. The company does not currently share ad revenues with the buildings, but Mr. Goldstein said that could change.
Among buildings with LifeAt Web sites, Mr. Goldstein said, residents of 64 percent of the units have created personal pages. Property managers, who give residents login and password information, also use the sites to post news about maintenance work and vacancies.
And about meettheneighbors.org…
Since late 2004, MeetTheNeighbors.org, a for-profit company based in Manhattan, has operated a social networking service for apartment dwellers.
That site, which is free, has about 15,000 users, and last year began serving residents of Boston, London and Dublin. Jared Nissim, the company’s founder, runs the site as a sidelight.
Mr. Nissim said some buildings have considerably more active Web sites than others, thanks mostly to the efforts of volunteers in the building who are responsible for managing the content of the site. “It may be one of the flaws of our system that it relies on one primary contact to get the ball rolling,” he said.
The meettheneighbors site reports 2,204 buildings set up with 11,621 members… about five people per building.
And i-neighbors.org…
I-Neighbors continues to grow, with 45,000 people now using the free service.
I seem to recall that this service hosts about 5,000 neighborhood groups across North America. That’s a lot of people… although averaging 9 people per group.
About 25% of Front Porch Forum‘s pilot city has subscribed via word of mouth. Our average neighborhood forum has about 50 households.
Voices for the Lake Brainstorming Forums
This is a compelling program and Front Porch Forum will participate…
Voices for the Lake Brainstorming Forums
-Tuesday, Oct. 30th – 9:30 to 2:30 @ ECHO
-Monday, Nov. 12th – 9:30 to 2:30 @ ECHO
-Saturday, Nov. 17th – 9:30 to 2:30 @ Champlain College’s Hauke Family Campus Center600,000 people CAN make a difference! How do you get thousands of people talking about and, more importantly, doing something for the health of Lake Champlain? Participate in the Voices for the Lake Brainstorming Forums and help set the course for engaging the public through new Internet technologies.
-EXPLORE emergent technologies, including wikis, blogs, and serious eGames
-INTERACT with technology industry leaders from Champlain College Emergent Media Center, IBM and Google.
-VOTE ELECTRONICALLY on your forum’s strongest ideas
-COLLABORATE on stewardship-themed Internet media and ECHO exhibits, website content, and school programs
-FREE lunch and parking
-ARTICIPATE in as many forums as you can – and spread the wordPlease RSVP: Steffen Parker, Voices for the Lake Facilitator: sparker@vpaonline.org / 802.864.1848×135 http://www.echovermont.org
Ask your Community vs. Find it Yourself
Greg Sterling writes today about social networks as a way to cut through the tangle of information on the web…
Community is something of an antidote to these phenomena. Community has definite limitations and flaws but it also offers a way to navigate the sea of too many choices online.
We’ve been talking about this with Front Porch Forum for some time. Seems like there are two kinds of people in the world… those who think there are two kinds of people and those who don’t. 😉 Whoops…
Another two kinds… people who live and breathe online and those who use it as a tool when needed. Advanced users jump all over the growing mass of online services to find whatever, whenever. The rest of us would just as soon ask some real and familiar/trusted people… “does anybody know where I can get X?”
Reminds me of the old male-female stereotype about asking for driving directions.
Front Porch Forum Earns National Award
We just learned that the community-building accomplishments of Front Porch Forum are being recognized with a national award! Hooray! Congratulations and thank you to the thousands of local people who contribute to the success of this service.
The Orton Family Foundation and PlaceMatters will present the award as part of the CommunityMatters07 national conference that will take place on Burlington’s waterfront Oct. 23-25. We’re truly honored by the “Innovator in Place” award and it provides a welcome boost to our efforts. Thanks to the Orton Family Foundation and PlaceMatters.
Michael and Valerie Wood-Lewis
Front Porch Forum
Here’s the press release from Orton…
Orton Family Foundation Awards
2007 Innovator in Place to Michael Wood-LewisMIDDLEBURY, Vermont –The Orton Family Foundation takes great pride and pleasure in naming Michael Wood-Lewis winner of the 2007 Innovator in Place Award. Michael and Front Porch Forum http:// frontporchforum.com, his free on-online service, excel at building social capital and community capacity for change.
In choosing Michael, the Foundation decided he best fulfilled the spirit of the award, which aims to honor successful grassroots community activists and leaders not typically recognized for their efforts. Michael accepted his $3,000 award at a reception at the ECHO Center on Burlington’s waterfront during the COMMUNITYMATTERS07 conference.
“Some argue that the Internet isolates people, further tearing the social fabric,” said Orton Family Foundation President and CEO Bill Roper, “but Michael proves the opposite can be true. His innovation, civic spirit and commitment enable the kind of friendship, trust and interdependence among neighbors that the Foundation believes are key to vibrant, sustainable community. His tool is enhancing Burlington’s heart and soul.”
Michael Wood-Lewis, with his wife Valerie, founded Front Porch Forum in 2006. In its first year, the Forum’s trend setting use of the Internet at the neighborhood level brought 25 percent of the citizens of Burlington, Vermont (pop. 38,889), into community discussions. The free on-line service hosts 130 adjacent neighborhood forums covering every part of Chittenden County. About 7,000 households have subscribed, and hundreds more join every month.
“We hear from people all the time who lament not knowing their neighbors,” said Wood-Lewis. “When Front Porch Forum kicks into gear, those connections begin to form. It’s a wonderful thing to watch take root, grow and blossom.”
Neighbors put Front Porch Forum to good use, connecting with neighbors and building community by posting all sorts of messages: borrow a ladder, refer a plumber, look out for a lost kitten, organize a block party, discuss traffic calming, report a break-in, announce a school play, debate zoning, and on and on.
In addition to direct results (“Kitten Found!”), it’s the growth of community offline that is the true measure of Front Porch Forum’s impact. Each message comes from a clearly identified nearby neighbor, so over time participants get to know each other better. This familiarity spills over from the virtual to the actual front porch.
The webs spun by Front Porch Forum that connect people are strengthened by 250 Forum Neighborhood Volunteers who champion the forums in their own areas and 140 local elected and public officials who participate across their jurisdictions. Police and other government officials use the site to better respond to problems in their area.
A remarkable Burlington innovation actively cultivating the development of rich, vibrant community, Front Porch Forum is exploring replication options and has a waiting list with more than 150 communities represented. Michael Wood-Lewis’s groundbreaking social innovation is a blueprint for community development of the future.
Michael’s previous experience includes steering a regional trade association to a position of national prominence. He also led a consortium of municipal leaders from across the country in developing environmental technology. He is active on the advisory board of Burlington Telecom, a cutting edge municipally owned “fiber optic to the home” utility, providing data, voice and video. Wood-Lewis brings to bear an unusual combination of technical background (MS engineering University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), business experience (MBA), and 20 years of community organizing.
CONTACT:
John Barstow
Director of Communications
The Orton Family Foundation
152 Maple Street, PO Box 111
Middlebury, VT 05753
www.orton.org
Local… the fifth horseman?
Russell C. Horowitz offers today that the Internet has…
seen four major consumer- and/or merchant-focused movements that have created or transferred hundreds of billions of dollars of value.
They are…
- Communications. Businesses that primarily focused on the consumer, navigating online, email and messaging.
- Commerce, which massively impacted both consumer and merchant-driven markets.
- Search, … exponentially expanded merchants’ ability to acquire customers more efficiently.
- Social networking. While we have yet to see how the model evolves, it is obvious that these businesses are impacting online consumer behavior.
Local will be the fifth – and it will impact consumers and merchants alike.
Each of these movements has created hundreds of billions of dollars of company value and Local will be at least as transforming. Local will not be winner take all and will be realized through the collaboration of many companies.
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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