I’m looking forward to the Q&A portion of this Network for Good webinar. Tune in!
Nonprofit 911
Deeper Dive into the Knight Foundation’s Connected Citizens Report
Building Connections and Engaging Your Community
May 24, 2011, 1-2 PM ESTHow will an increasingly connected world — where social networks are proliferating on and off-line– — affect the way people push for social change?
Learn more about what’s to come from the highlights and findings of a new Knight Foundation and Monitor Institute report, Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril and Potential of Networks. This brand-new information draws from more than 70 rich examples of how social networks are being used to build better and more engaged communities.
Speakers: Mayur Patel, Knight Foundation; Diana Scearce, Monitor Institute; Michael Wood-Lewis, Front Porch Forum
I think Front Porch Forum is winning. They’ve managed to get 90% of households in a #VT neighborhood to sign up for it, and the community contributions are high quality, useful and interesting.
Beyond that, there are a bunch of great neighborhood blogs in various pockets in the U.S., like West Seattle Blog and Uptown Update here in Chicago.
And finally, I’m biased, but I think EveryBlock is genuinely interesting and useful, especially with our recent community-focused relaunch.
Thanks Adrian! That’s great company for FPF to keep. (See StreetFight for the full interview.) As I’ve said before, EveryBlock’s relaunch is a powerhouse.
Congratulations to fellow Knight News Challenge winner EveryBlock on the rollout today of their impressively revamped web service. Per Mashable…
EveryBlock, a hyperlocal news site acquired by msnbc.com in August 2009, unveiled a new version Monday designed to encourage conversation and collaboration among neighbors.
“We’re shifting from a one-way newsfeed to more of a community-empowered website,” says EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty. “Instead of going to the site to passively consume information, we’re going to offer a platform for posting messages to your neighbors, to discover who lives near you.”
In addition to the neighborhood-specific news, business reviews, crime reports and real estate listings the site delivered previously, a slew of new features encourages users to share and discuss local news, meet one another and coordinate neighborhood activities. Users will be able to create profiles, post about events and other topics of interest, as well as find neighbors who “follow” the same places to connect with those with similar tastes. (Soon, Holovaty says, the site hopes to integrate Foursquare’s API, but for now it will show neighbors who follow the same places on EveryBlock.)
Adrian and his team are doing great work. He goes on to say…
“The web doesn’t yet offer an easy and effective way for people to post messages to their neighbors,” Holovaty explains. “Other social media tools are focused on people you already know — professional colleagues, friends, family. But how many people become Facebook friends with their neighbors?” he asks.
Front Porch Forum plays this role in our many Vermont pilot communities, and various blogs and e-lists do the same in hundreds of various neighborhoods across North America. The first proof of social media, of course, is adoption… do people use it? We’ll have to wait and see how EveryBlock fares on that front. The second proof — can they make it pay? — well, I imagine Everyblock has more breathing room with deep-pocketed MSNBC.com holding the purse strings.
UPDATE: This bit from the Nieman Journalism Lab includes several more write ups about EveryBlock’s news. The interview on Poynter is especially informative…
Holovaty answered a lot of questions about the redesign in a Poynter chat, saying that the site’s mission has changed from making people informed about their area as an end in itself to facilitating communication between neighbors in order to improve their communities. GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram applauded the shift in thinking, arguing that the main value in local news sites is in the people they connect, not in the data they collect. At 10,000 Words, Jessica Roy noted that the change was a signal that hyperlocal sites should focus not just on the online realm, but on fostering offline connections as well.
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