Building the "Social Internet" From the Outside In

What initially struck me about Freecycle was that it was the first useful thing on the Internet I learned about by reading a newspaper instead of through the leading-edge online news sources I follow. The next thing I noticed about Freecycle was that, unlike Craigslist, Flickr, and other "Social Internet" phenomena, it wasn't centered on major cities but had local groups all over the place, even in towns like Apache Junction, Arizona, and Bradenton, Florida. And then, when I actually used my local Freecycle group, I discovered something else: A high percentage of users were over 50, female, or both.

Note that Freecycle was not started in or near San Francisco or New York, and that it's a non-profit. It's decentralized, so anyone who wants to start a local Freecycle community, anywhere in the world, can go ahead and do it. Since it's essentially a collection of Yahoo! Groups, no technical knowledge is required, just time and patience.

Freecycle scales easily. If one group gets too crowded -- and many get hundreds of OFFERED and WANTED posts every day -- it's no big deal to split that group into two or more smaller sub-regional ones. And if more moderators are needed, training them is no problem, at least on the technical side. This is an ideal volunteer job for a retiree with a computer and Internet connection. There are plenty of retirees on my local Freecycle, and I'm sure there are many on other local Freecycles, too.

Support Your Local Blogfinder

TampaBLAB is meaningless to you unless you live in or near Tampa, Florida. It aggregates local blogs, and only local blogs. Founder/maintainer Brett Glisson put it online in September, 2005, and says it now gets "about 1000 to 1500 pageviews per day," and that it has "been picking up a lot of steam" in the past few weeks.

Brett got the idea from ORblogs, which calls itself "Oregon's Independent Weblog Community." He decided to do it as a regional thing rather than statewide because he liked the idea of it being intensely local.

Brett says, "This kind of site is something anyone with a bit of web-savvy could do."

TampaBLAB isn't as fancy as Dan Gillmor's Bayosphere or many of the other professionally-run regional blogs and "citizen journalism" sites out there, but it's not supposed to be a professional operation. It's something put together by one guy who has a day job in IT with a local financial service company, using "tweaked versions" of WordPress, FeedWordPress, the OZH Click Counter and "some custom graphics."

Brett has his own blog, My Addled Brain, but it is just one of 60+ blogs that now belong to TampaBLAB. A cabbie writes about the cab business. RANTING RIGHT WING HOWLER is exactly what you'd expect. Bitch | Lab ("because lefties and feminists have dirty mids too") is in a category of its own. Several "professional" bloggers from the St. Petersburg Times are listed. There's no set political agenda. There are neighborhood activism blogs, sports blogs, news blogs, opinion blogs, and silly random musings. It's a mix of pretty much everything and anything that anyone in the Tampa area might want to write about on the Internet.

At some point Brett hopes to interview some of the bloggers and perhaps try to have a get-together now and then in order to make it more of a community. And he may look for some local business sponsors, but has no expectation of ever earning a living either from his blog or by aggregating others' blogs.

The main thing here is that Brett has put together an easy way for locals to find what other locals are writing. It is an idea that can be duplicated anywhere the Internet reaches for next to no money, without a national company or big name behind it.

What Else is Out There?

Freecycle and TampaBLOG use existing software. They aren't hot Web 2.0 properties that have venture capitalists sniffing after them and get lots of buzz. But they are at least as important to the people who use them -- who are, remember, not necessarily computer sophisticates -- as Gmail or LinkedIn.

I'm sure there are plenty of other unheralded Web communities out there, quietly growing and attracting non-technical users. Most will never amount to much. But a few will become popular and influential, or at least will inspire imitators that might end up changing the way millions of people use the Internet.

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Freecycle doesn't scale

[PostItNote]

I joined my local Freecycle and it was was great, but, as Craig found out with his list, it doesn't scale and I've been forced to unsubscribe because of the sheel volume of postings. The reason that Craigslist is a website for larger (and even smaller [craigslist.org]) cities is that sending everything to everyone is not a long term solution. But for tiny communities Freecycle is just right.

It's all about the size of the group you are expecting to build. If it is a small community, then everyone chatting to everyone fosters a sense of belonging, but if you are expecting hundreds of people to join, then everyone chatting to everyone makes for too much noise and not enough signal.

Re:Freecycle

[Bob_Villa]

Maybe it is crap in your area, but we have gotten a $400 swing set (2 years old) for free, you can get landscaping timbers, bulbs, sometimes you can get mulch, excess building materials, etc... You can also get working televisions and computers that people are giving away because they have newer ones.

If you have children (like I do), you can get your type of formula, coupons for formula, clothing for your little ones, toys for them, etc...

If you have pets or just got a pet, you can get litter boxes (for cats) and toys. You can get aquariums, fish, dogs, cats, hamsters, snakes, birds, rabbits, etc... (Yes, Freecycle does allow people to give away pets, but gives lots of warnings on doing this).

You can get furniture (usually good quality), cooking materials, school books, books on any topic you can imagine, magazines, etc... People have even given away pool tables, above ground pools, spas, etc...

And if you want to reduce the clutter in your house, there is always somebody that could use what you consider 'crap'. There are a lot of people who can't afford to buy very much, so be considerate.

Re:That's because Freecycle is like eBay

[Red Flayer]

The Recycling Center in Redding, CT has free item dropoff/pickup (BTW, this is where people take their cans/bottles etc). My sister-in-law has gotten some real finds there, and also left valuable items that she no longer has use for (Baby furniture, etc).

So, this exists in meatspace as well as online.

My point is that savvy people with a real need for stuff can do really well on Freecycle, it's not just for "people with too much time, too much stuff, and too much storage space.

caveat Freecycle

[fdrebin]

I've used Freecycle extensively, mostly to get rid of what I had thought was "junk nobody could possibly want" and to get a few things. Frequently this was stuff I figured I couldn't sell on ebay.

The hard part is that of the maybe 30 Freecyclers I met up with, about 1/2 are unable to show up when they say they will, or say that they won't be showing up after all, etc. So there are a few possible downsides. Some folk just want to get stuff for free, etc. Often (20% of the time) you see items reposted because the recipient couldn't be bothered to show up.
Another way to put this - you'll meet a different social stratum than you might be used to. I met some might fine folks... and a few I hope I never meet again. You don't have to meet folks personally, though - often you just put stuff on the porch and people come pick it up.
I always felt creepy walking up to peoples houses and taking stuff... but that's the way some folks want it.
It does take some time to wade through the postings/emails. Much of it is baby clothes, stuff that doesn't work, etc.
Generally the approaches of the "giver-awayers" is "first one to pick it up gets it", "first email gets it", or "best sob story" gets it. It's up to the person doing the giving.

On the plus side - there really is one - a lot of stuff that might otherwise go into a landfill goes to some useful purpose.

Someone asked for a scanner - I had one that only worked under Win95. Turns out - that's what the lady had. Perfect fit.
I had some old PCs and boxes and boxes of old PC parts, VL bus, ISA, etc. This guy who teaches kids how to work on computers took it all. What better way for them to learn when it doesn't matter if you blow the whole thing up.

I got this nice 7x7 L-shaped desk I use. I had to go to the donors house and disassemble it. It was like $1000 new, it cost me nothing.

Of course, you might be in a different kind of area than I am (St. Louis County)

Re:Freecycle

[Bob McCown]

Yup, we love the freecycle groups around here, too, got all sorts of neat stuff, and got rid of a bunch of stuff. But, the moderators of the groups are petty dictators, always ready to slam people for not formatting their posts right.

Re:That's because Freecycle is like eBay

[mblase]

Yes, Freecycle is about free stuff, but the same finding and shipping issues apply.

But that's the advantage of a local emphasis: "shipping" just becomes a matter of deciding who can drive to the other guy's house to pick up or deliver the item.

Example: My wife's a subscriber to the Peoria, Illinois freecycle group. Lots of traffic, but it's managable, on the order of a large rec.arts.* newsgroup back in the heyday of Usenet, and like those newsgroups members use descriptive subject lines to others don't have to read every friggin' message. We get, and give, a lot of kids' stuff as our toddlers grow into preschoolers and kindergarteners. It's like a thrift shop without the shop.

Re:Freecycle business model

[GRW]

In my experience, most items offered on Freecycle tend to go very quickly. I had three or four responses to my first offer and it was picked up about one hour after posting it. Most things that I see offered would not be worth putting on EBay. Usually it is things too good to throw out, but not valuable enough to sell for more than a couple of bucks at a garage sale.