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I-Neighbors, Not just another social network
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Sep 02, 2004 07:50 PM
from the of-course-you-could-just-walk-outside dept.
from the of-course-you-could-just-walk-outside dept.
neoatbay writes "Globeandmail has a story on I-Neighbors.org, a social networking site based on geography, rather than affinity. Unlike other websites that allow global, national, or city-wide communication, I-Neighbors links members of a single neighborhood, defined by the people that create them. It is created by a team led by Pro. Keith Hampton at MIT. Anyone in this neighborhood, and play badminton?"
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Stooooopid (Score:5, Funny)
Anyway, the point is - I don't know (nor do I want to) the people that live six inches away from me on the other side of the wall. Why the FUCK would I want to know any other people in the "neighborhood"?
This sounds like just an excuse for local people to hookup and fuck behind their significant others' back.
Re:Stooooopid (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Stooooopid (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way, there aren't many neighborhoods registered right now. I just checked out 4 or 5 zip codes and none of them had any...
Parent
Re:Stooooopid (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stooooopid (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, don't hold your breath. The domain name was only registered less than a year ago and there are probably thousands of identical competitors already. Personally, I'll just stick to Craigslist and Yahoo, at least they have critical mass.
Re:Stooooopid (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Stooooopid (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you'd know more people if you left the house every once in a while. Give the service a chance, maybe they can help you.
Parent
Re:Stooooopid (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Stooooopid (Score:5, Insightful)
The real jewel of this project is that it has an easy ad revenue pathway. The service knows exactly where people live so it can target local businesses to them... easy money!
Finally one of these social sites has the ability to make real money.
If they were to partner up with something like local google [google.com], they could have a real market.
We should reward good business ideas... we see them so infrequently on the web these days.
Parent
Re:Stooooopid (Score:3, Insightful)
this is an opportunity.... try it. (Score:5, Insightful)
This has potential. One thing I've noticed (and read about) over the last twenty years (the explosion of the information age) is the accelerated pace of everything. I had lived in neighborhoods where within 200 feet of me are ten households and potentially contacts and friends. But everyone is SO busy working, commuting, carting children around, being paranoid.... noone has time left for socializing. So, after living in that house for almost ten years, the only people we really became acquainted with were our next door neighbors.
Ironically, right before moving from there, we discovered potential new friends one block away. How? She was the bailiff of a trial for which I participated on the jury. In a trial 30 miles from the house!
I've already created a new neighborhood for my new place. Will be inviting people around the area. I think this could be disruptive technology, which in this case could be very cool. My $.02
Wanna network? Have kids.. (Score:2)
That is, until our daugther started school last september.. she would be invited to birthday parties or play dates and one of us would stay, hit it off with her friend's parents. It would steamroll from there. There hasn't been a weekend in ages that we have stayed home alone.
Re:this is an opportunity.... try it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Its always nice to have some friends nearby. Its miss college when I could walk down the hall and yell to find something to do. Its great to be able to be able to just walk down the block and drop by, rather than play phone tag or have to drive 30 minutes to see them.
Re:this is an opportunity.... try it. (Score:2)
And then I read your post. More specifically:
Its great to be able to be able to just walk down the block and drop by
Oh no. The dreaded drop-in. Please -- call first! And if you get no answer or voicemail, leave a short message and don't keep calling.
Seriously -- you inadvertently made his point
weird (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:weird (Score:2)
great (Score:5, Funny)
I can see it now, instead of the "Welcome to the Neighborhood!" cake, you get a "Welcome to the Neighborhood" email.
Actually, it's... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
A couple ways (Score:4, Interesting)
1) When you see someone new moving in, ask if they need help. If they do need help, then you've made a new friend. If they don't need help, introduce yourself anyway. Just say something like "Well, my name is xxxx and I live in apartment number yyyy. If there is anything you need, just come and ask." Your neighbor feels welcomed and you don't actually have to carry any boxes. I have offered this service quite a few times and have never had anyone say that they needed help moving stuff. But, I have made several friends this way.
2) Invite some of your friends over to play board games or watch a football game. Make/order some food and pick up some beer. When you see your neighbors a couple days before your party, introduce yourself. Say "Hi, we've never been formally introduced. I'm xxxx and I live in apartment number yyyy. I'm having some friends over tomorrow for some board games. Maybe you and your husband/wife would like to stop by."
3) This one may not work for a lot of you, due to a lack of hurricanes in most places. During hurricane Charlie I met some of my neighbors because we were all sitting out on the front porch, getting drunk, and watching the storm.
Could i-neighbors help break the ice in my building?
In your situation, I would skip i-neighbors and go straight to an invitation to a party. If you are planning on having a labor day party with your friends, it won't cost you anything to invite your neghbors. I wouldn't plan on it wth just your neighbors though. People often have plans for holiday weekends and won't be able to go.
The bottom line is that you often have to make the first step. If you've never been the person to break the ice, then it can be a little intimidating. You just have to bite the bullet and do it.
Parent
What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Member defined Neighbourhoods? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can hoods be redefined? For instance you might have a state-wide hood, but then as it becomes popular in that state you might want to break it down into smaller hoods? Is that sort of flexibility allowed? If not I can't see this being popular.
This idea relies upon it having lots of people to get lots of people. But that's the problem, how do you get lots of people in the first place? By making it so large hoods can be created that can later be broken down into smaller hoods. Otherwise I don't see this being popular at all.
Re:Member defined Neighbourhoods? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like phone book, mapping and even dating websites, I imagine you could limit your search to a distance radius from where you are located.
This idea relies upon it having lots of people to get lots of people. But that's the problem, how do you get lots of people in the first place?
Oh yeah? I've a question about this chicken and this egg...
Simple answer: If you build it, they will come.
By making it so large hoods can be created that can later be broken down into smaller hoods. Otherwise I don't see this being popular at all.
At a minimum, you are entering a zip code (this is a US Postal code). Anyone living in my zip code isn't going to be all that far away.
Parent
Re:Member defined Neighbourhoods? (Score:2)
It appears slashdot is helping with that, there is aready a large list of communities created on Sept 2.
Re:Member defined Neighbourhoods? (Score:3, Interesting)
The "New Neighborhood Guidelines" list the following suggestions for any new neighborhood creation:
The problem for me is that on most other sites that attempt to create a social network, be it Friendster, Livejournal, whatever, I've seen at most
Communities on Orkut? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this more than a zip-code structured Orkut [orkut.com] community system? Besides pre-defining the communities before any participants arrive, it's really not.
How CAN you improve on the orkut-style social networking system?
1. Dont be so DAMN slow. Friendster, orkut, etc are all so slow at this point it's almost worthless. They all start off fast but load kills them.
2. Create an easy 'port' system whereby you can just 'point' the new site at an existing profile to have the new profile auto-created and friends added automatically. Filling out 4 page profiles and spamming your friends multiple times a year = no fun.
Re:Communities on Orkut? (Score:2)
Oh! Oh! I know!
Because his one isn't an exclusive gated community.
Simple enough.
Re:Communities on Orkut? (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried it. I even registered my "neighborhood" since none existed in my zip code (or presumably near, since none were offerered.)
It's faster than orkut/friendster/etc. but no faster than these services were when they started (i.e, before they got slammed with more load than they anticipated or were prepared to pay for.) We'll see how snappy those pages are in a few months.
The UI is pretty good and intuitive, but there are some annoyances. For example, when I registered I filled out some 12 fields of info including user name and submitted. Of course, my username was already in use, but rather than present the otherwise-ok-filled-in form and let me change the username, or offer similar alternatives, it made me go "back" in my browser and re-enter everything into the emptied fields. That happened twice (I saved the info the 2nd time in anticipation, but it's still unnecessarily unfriendly.)
Now that I'm in I seem to have control over a bit more than the competition websites offer. I have a profile where I can "share info about [my]self", a directory of users (me), an event calendar (nothing happening), photo albums (all empty,) matches (others in my community, of which there are currently 0,) reviews (nada,) polls (I plan to create a poll to surrender my neighbors' land to me, vote alone, and win, bwahaha), see who's online now (and thus not initiate my plan to claim their land for my own, since they're probably home,) email everyone in my neighborhood in one fell swoop (local spammer heaven!) or arrange/join a carpool.
All of which sounds really neat, if not entirely original and a bit milquetoast (hey -- no "C.A." a la craigslist [craigslist.org]?) Or at least it would be if there were anyone else registered in the area.
Which brings me to my final question -- how much do these ads cost?
Parent
Re:Communities on Orkut? (Score:2)
Still, with its invite-only system, it keeps out tons of people who otherwise might want to try it.
2. THe message boards are completely dead. The only new threads I've seen lately are "brazil?", in communities that have nothing to with Brazil.
3. There's no blogging functions. Sure, don't have to use it, but would be nice. Then I can use the blog functions to bitch about Brazilians invading Orkut.
4. Brazilian invasion. Need I say more?
Full circle (Score:3)
Re:Full circle (Score:2)
More than a bit over-ambitious (Score:5, Insightful)
As other posters pointed out, there are few neighborhoods registered so far. One of the reasons this is so is that i-neighbors has, in my opinion, a ridiculous policy for what a neighborhood is: "An area of fewer than 500 households, or a single apartment complex." If they get even 5% participation across the US, an incredible feat by website standards, they would have on the average, less than 25 households in a neighborhood. That's a pretty minimal selection of people. I don't see what the point of making neighborhoods so small is; I can easily get to at least 10,000 households by foot in my average, suburban town. If this think wants any chance of survival, they better change that rule.
I have a better idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to get more people involved, how about getting community funded Internet? Start a community association, then raise funds to put in a reasonable pipe and a few 802.11g router/ APs and provide the service FOC to members of the community.
The only cavet would be that all users will have to see a community page as home page on first load and the DHCP lease expires every 12 hours.
That way the community is more involved, as it provides an incentive for members of the community to participate.
North America only (Score:2)
Lack of time to expand, or just a revenge for Orkut?
Re:North America only (Score:3, Informative)
alpha software - don't waste your time (Score:3, Interesting)
Even though it told me there was an "error" on the creation of my village, it was created anyway, however I am not recognized as the founder.
Upon attempting to join my neighborhood I was then confronted with more error messages.
Please - don't waste your time like I did. This is alpha software, and that needs to be noted conspicuously.
This level of unprofessionalism is unacceptable.
Re:alpha software - don't waste your time (Score:2)
Re:alpha software - don't waste your time (Score:3, Funny)
I agree.
But then again I'm referring to your comment on slashdot.
Re:alpha software - don't waste your time (Score:3, Interesting)
Select a calendar week view [i-neighbors.org].
You get: Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING in F:\ineighbors\calendar\weekview.php on line 6
"F:" -- running on IIS. That explains a lot.
Click a date [i-neighbors.org] to add an event.
You've clicked the date you want already -- but what's that? Add an event gives you some lovely drop-downs without defaulting to the day you clicked: Date: [Month] [Day]
Sign up [i-neighbors.org] for an account. Fill in all the form fields. Choose username "randy". Submit. Aren't you t
Gainesville Fl. Slashdot Meetup. (Score:4, Interesting)
How about more people around Gainesville/North Florida sign up so we can get together.
Re:Gainesville Fl. Slashdot Meetup. (Score:2)
Why limit "neighborhood" to a geographic area (Score:2)
Combine that with the ability to form sub-communities and you could get the real interesting stuff like:
"started MIT 1980, born in Brooklyn, NY and likes to paint abstract paintings"
That's just an example, the sub-community could be anything really.
Why is a complete registration required? (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:2)
Also the potential for kidnappers and child molesters increases with this service, so the rules of Internet safety still applies. Beyond the 'general neighborhood', or say upto 2 blocks away, no other information about the person should be shared IMHO.
I'd be inte
What happened to the E-everything? (Score:3, Funny)
Granularity problems in Canada (Score:3, Interesting)
My neighbourhood (Mount Pleasant, in the East Side of Vancouver, BC) doesn't follow neat FSA boundaries. The hierarchy should be a little fuzzier, like Country -> State/Prov -> Region -> City -> Neighbourhood, and the "city" part should probably be optional, because there are neighbourhoods that cross civic boundaries. My friend who lives four blocks east and ten blocks south is most definitely in the same neighbourhood, but he lives in a different FSA.
Power: Scary (Score:3, Interesting)
Terrible idea, and here's why.. (Score:4, Insightful)
AKA (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Looks interesting, but... (Score:2)
Re:duhh (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent