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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?"
This is a stupid idea. I lived in the same neighborhood my first 20 years of life and only knew one neighbor - barely. Then the rest of my life since then, I've lived in the same apartment complex and I've never known anyone. I have seen the people who live next door and downstairs once or twice in the last five years, but I don't know anything about them. Or maybe they don't even live there and they're just visiting the people who do.
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.
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
I can see it now, instead of the "Welcome to the Neighborhood!" cake, you get a "Welcome to the Neighborhood" email.
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.
How is this more than a zip-code structured Orkut 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.
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.
Probably. It seems a little weird to walk up to someone's house these days and say "hi, I'm so and so, can I come in?" In the old days community centers like churches and the market were used for that sort of thing. Maybe something like that is done at malls where geeks walk into gaming stores and chat it up about what they are buying. Or people in clothing stores, or something similar. Seems these days when you strike up a conversation like that you might be thinking inside "is this guy asking me about that so he can come to my house and steal my Xbox and all my games?" or "I hope I never run into you again!" =)
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
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.