Slashdot Mirror
I-Neighbors, Not just another social network
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?"
If I wanted to interact with people that were geographically near me, I'd just hit the community center/park/mall. Sounds like just another way for people to stay shut up in their homes.
How defined are the neighbourhoods? For instance in America you could probably have city-wide hoods and it have a decent member size. But in Australia lots of cities aren't going to have any members but 1 or 2 people. What do they do? Can they have a state-wide hood? If not it isn't going to be popular in places such as Perth (one of Australia's 8 largest cities).
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.
Having a web based service requires that people sign up. Most people would be reluctant to, maybe because of laziness, maybe because of indifference.
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.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I just spent *my time* enterting data for my neighborhood only to be confronted with error messages.
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.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I thought Slashdot Meetup was already doing basically the same thing.
How about more people around Gainesville/North Florida sign up so we can get together.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
It's not more than a zip-code structured Orkut community system. Or at least not much more. Maybe less in some ways.
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?) 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?
everything in moderation
They subdivide Canada into provinces and then FSAs (Forward Sortation Areas, otherwise known as the first three characters of your postal code) before letting you drill down to the neighbourhood level. Unfortunately, this particular way they've chosen to break down the geographic hierarchy is oversimplified and basically unworkable, at least for Canada.
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.
Here are a couple of ways that I have used to meet my neighbors in the past.
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.
I seem to be the first person to join I-Neighbors from this neighborhood. As such, I'm the "founder": my description of the neighborhood and its boundaries is official, and changes can't be made without my permission. What if I go mad with power?
The Face Book is a social network for people in the same college or university. You can fill out classes you're taking, and then see all the people who are also taking it, as well as fill out where you live, etc. Very popular with a lot of the schools that it supports (listing is on the home page).