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Meeting Locals over the Internet?
tjjuggle asks: "Why is so hard to do local communication on the internet? Suppose I want to find a group of random people to play soccer with tomorrow. Given that I live in a town of 50,000+ people, many of whom are online, there should be a way. For major metropolitan regions, Craigslist.org fills this gap, but it is no use to those of us who live outside of the San Francisco Bay Area. Has anyone developed a service like Craigslist which can be used throughout the country? I imagine a site that, given a zipcode, it could then tell you which users are signed up who live within 10-20miles of you. Does anyone know of other local communication mechanisms?" Even now, one of the best ways for local communications remains Instant Messaging, but you usually have to meet the person, first. Are there other community-oriented websites out there that can assist users in meeting other users who live nearby?
Great idea, but think of the ways it can be abused. What if some creep or stalker wants a list of all the people that live around him? That could easily be arranged. Or if a spammer wanted e-mail addresses or physical addresses, they could easily sign up for multiple accounts.
I would have signed up for such a service, but after an atempted identity theft, I would probably think long and hard before participating in such a thing.
And I think such services would be hard to create on a national level given potential legal issues involved. A honeypot of litigation! (people suck like that.)
I'm not sure if its exactly what you are looking for, but there are -tons- of topics, and I live in a relativly small city, and there are a few local meetups in the area of differant interests. It's a pretty cool service, and looks like it could grow into something quite cool.
...Are there other community-oriented websites out there that can assist users in meeting other users who live nearby? ...
This sounds like a town where everyone is addicted to drugs.
I find open office helps me with these tasks. print poster, put poster in local common area, wait for phone calls / emails. even works for those with out computers.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, a website received newspaper coverage, but its idea is applicable anywhere.
s iness/columnists/david_plotnikoff/2759439.htm
http://www.local2me.com/
Here's the newspaper article:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/bu
The website has a simple idea: one huge email list, filtered by location. People register their location (by ZIP code), and other optional information about themselves, when signing up. All email submissions go into a central database, then they are reflected only to those people who have chosen to receive them. It can also be filtered by age range and other categories, and multiple filters can be applied.
For instance, I have chosen to receive emails from everybody 10 or fewer miles away from me, and emails from people in my age range 20 or fewer miles away.
On the service, people swap recommendations all the time. The mailing list has helped me find a good veterinarian in the area!
Because of the publicity generated by the media coverage, this service is most popular in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it does have support for nationwide ZIP codes.
It could be better: I wish it had a browseable archive of postings that could be similarly filtered, instead of it being a simple email forwarder. That would make it easy to browse past answers to FAQ's. But, it is very good for what it does offer.
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
Well, I signed up for both the Linux meetup and Slashdot meetup in my area.
.5 million I'd think that there would be at least 5 (10 ppm) people who would want an excuse to go out into the Big Blue Room.
Since then, not one has gone off - not enough people can be bothered to even VOTE on a place to meet up - let alone show up.
In a town of
www.eFax.com are spammers
Personally, I'm a big fan of IRC. There are several IRC search engines out there. Make use of one, type in the name of the largest city near you and *presto* people from the local area galore. In fact, that's how I met my wife.
This is one thing that the BBS excelled at but the Internet sucks at. A couple of the BBS I used to frequent had monthly get togethers at safe, public places. But then, that was the old days, when 9600bps was smoking fast and only people with deep pockets could afford anything faster than 2400bps.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
--Michael from Local2Me
That craigslist.org reports that it exists for a number of locales beyond simply the SF Bay Area. (atlanta, austin, boston, chicago, dallas, denver, detroit, houston, los angeles, miami, minneapolis, new york, philadelphia, phoenix, portland, sacramento, san diego, seattle, washDC, london, toronto, vancouverBC) Granted, some of these are rather less well-developed than craigslist.org nee SF.
A lot of people will give me stick for this, but nonetheless, I'm standing by, IRC.
:), and we knew before we met that we had a lot in common. We phoned and txt each other regularly. We had similar tastes in music and both of us were highly academic.
IRC *is* a great place to meet people with similar interests. If you're an extrovert, you'll simply love to meet people, and if you're an introvert, you'll need a helping hand but you'll find the variety of different people you'll [probably] never meet irl, on IRC.
I met the last person i dated through a community site (I then met her best friend, but thats another story
I guess it's because IRC is a conscice medium that does away with all the 'wasteful' talk.
imho, it's no replacement to meeting people on the train, at parties or in bars, but people should really giver consideration to IRC communities rather than plague them with "nerd"ish slander.
In August i'll be off to Reading [Music] Festival (red-ding, is a Town nr London), with my IRC mate from Scotland and one of his IRC mates from the midlands. We've met before, and we're doing it again - it's funny and whitty and we had a great laugh last year.
Matt
Sadly, NTK report that they're in receivership. :-(
--
It sounds like the poster knows, but since I'm a longtime user (in three different cities) and supporter of Craigslist, I want to make sure it's clear to others, as well...Craigslist is currently set up in 22 metro areas, and continues to add more:
atlanta
austin
boston
chicago
dallas
denver
detroit
houston
los angeles
miami
minneapolis
new york
philadelphia
phoenix
portland
sacramento
san diego
seattle
wash, DC
london
toronto
vancouver
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
It's called a phone book. Try The Ultimates White Pages and see how hard it is to find people.
Not to mention your county assessment records (which are open by law).