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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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Have something to say to the Slashdot community? Email your article or proposal to roblimo at slashdot dot org.
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.
---------
Have something to say to the Slashdot community? Email your article or proposal to roblimo at slashdot dot org.
My work here is dung.
A 50 yr old local blogger chick. Cool.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
what is this female you speak of?
an internet where no one wants to ask a/s/l
Internet Archive: Live Music Archive
"...They aren't hot Web 2.0 properties that have venture capitalists sniffing after them and get lots of buzz..."
Not yet anyway...
1. Find item on Freecycle located within a 10-minute drive of your house
2. Agree to pick up item in 5 days
3. Post a 4-day auction for the item on EBay
4. If no bids, cancel the pickup
5. If successful bid, go get item and send it to bidder
6. Profit!
"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"
I discovered this too when I went to milffinder.com and got redirected to freecycle.org
On Freecycle it's not a/s/l it's "what crap do are you giving away today?"
...that I wasn't going to find out what it was from the Slashdot article. I mean really, is putting:
It's a grassroots movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns
Somewhere near the top of the article too much to ask for?
Man, I gotta get more creative in my Googling....
The revolution will NOT be televised.
1. Find item on Freecycle located within a 10-minute drive of your house
2. Agree to pick up item in 5 days
3. Post a 4-day auction for the item on EBay
4. If no bids, don't bother to cancel the pickup. Just be an ass and leave the offerer hanging. Don't respond to any emails
5. If successful bid, go get item and send it to bidder
6. Profit!
No, I'm not bitter.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
I heard about it a while back at my bridge club.... but then again you insensitive clods never get out from behind your computers and socialize!...
Sig Hansen?
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) 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.
Amazingly enough, many of the really interesting developments in online communities are being driven by people who couldn't give a chuff about Web 2.0 and the blogosphere and are using existing (and in many cases decades old) technologies to do things that weren't envisioned by the designers. 'Democratisation of the hacker ethic', if you need a buzzword. Us insiders get wrapped up in the idea that the net is all about creating a parallel reality but the really interesting stuff that's happening now is non-geeks using old tech in new ways.
It's funny when people think that it's interesting that the internet can cater to both women and those over 50 years old. I can see that being odd some 15 years ago, when the internet wasn't readily available to the public, and when PCs were just for the wealthy geeks in town.
But these days EVERYone has a PC. People do things like shop, bank, and communicate using PCs. 66% of American women go on-line [according to Pew, 2005]. My elderly mother and all her friends use the internet every day.
So what's the big deal about a let's-share-our-shit forum that appears to attract woman over 50? I bet the on-line barbie forum attracts a lot of pre-teen girls, and the knitting forums have a surprising number of women. I even know women that use eBay.
Welcome to the new world, where women and older people use the internet too.
Freecycle is about trading physical items. That's why it has such demographics. Like eBay, it's people with too much time, too much stuff, and too much storage space. Yes, Freecycle is about free stuff, but the same finding and shipping issues apply.
so I've been a "freecycler" for about two years now. I generally give away way more stuff then I pick up due to the SO wanting a "clean house" (ie no more random wires). In addition to that, I fancy myself a bit of a "tree-hugger", and these groups do fit right into the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra.
However, as these groups break away from the fringe and become more mainstream you wouldn't believe some of the pompous posts I've read. stuff like, I'm looking for a 24 foot black leather sectional gently used, nothing tacky. OR wanted PS2 new games only. Like these services were created to help people fulfill their material desires with no cash outlay. That is the real reason these groups don't scale, it's not that an email list is difficult to manage. The problem is that people view thses lists as their internet Santa Claus.
Technology Consulting & Free Downloads
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)
Stupidity... has a habit of getting its way.
Where's the networking stuff? Don't even get me started on recycling. I have over one thousand dollars of CD's stacked on the kitchen table ready to go to the landfill. Why? Basically it's less of a hassle and more cost effective from a personal time and effort point of view.
Believe it or not, women actually read slashdot, check out the Reg, and have a long list of tech sites bookmarked. Some of us can even write code, so long as we have a really pretty IDE to do it in, and are at no risk of breaking our fingernails.
of course, biting monkeys is not to everyone's taste - Konrad Lorenz
I am looking for alpha testers for a new DVD trading site (http://www.dvdtrader.us/) which I hope to establish similar social coperation. It's meant to help people setup trades for used DVDs with people in their local communities. It's still in development, but I am a stronger believer in the "release early and release often" mantra, so have at it. :)
Apache Junction isn't far from Phoenix. So they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they're not that far from a population center.
:)
That said, those of us in the Phoenix metro area like to pick on them as being out in the boonies
Ob. captcha: victims
Oops, sorry - posted to the wrong story.
Funny, but you wouldn't think it if you've ever offered a PC on a Freecycle. The last time I did, I had about an 8:1 ratio of responses to available computers.
*snicker*
;)
And some of us even can do it without the pretty IDE!
Oh, I don't know... it seems to be editors-only this afternoon. Is there a "right" story?
dude, this is /.! use match.com or even okcupid but we don't want to hear it here. KTHXBYE
Retirees
Homemakers
Students (of all ages)
Geeks
I am officially gone from
Human roaches, feeding off each other's garbage...
"Your mother's a bloody liar... That's what I liked about her." - Yellowbeard
Geeks think they want geeks. Geeks don't want geeks. Geeks want artists, they're far more compatible.
Put yourself in a position where you're likely to meet an artist type.... a musician, a painter, a writer, etc. You'll do well. Trust me =)
Freecycle is such a great idea.. i too have been using it for some time now.. its great for my infatuation with obsolete/vintage computers.. and I even gave a home to a kitty from a lady who was giving them away.. my girlfriend gave away tons of boxes full of clothes to another lady who had some kids and was poor.. i think its wonderful, and more people should be introduced to it.. especially lower income people..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Especially the mothers.
You're asking for a girlfriend as Anonymous Coward?
Isn't that a little silly?
D
My wife and I had to get rid of an old washer/dryer that we got with our house. The previous owner said it needed parts, but it ran fine. Since we just wanted the damn thing gone, and we didn't want to put up the money for a newspaper ad, and it still worked and we didn't want to throw away something that was perfectly serviceable, I listed it at our local Freecycle group.
We got about 25 offers in the first hour of it being listed. Most of them were from the people who live around us; college kids and people with large families and limited incomes. Neither of these groups can be said to have too much time or stuff.
The eyesore in our basement eventually ended up going to a former appliance repairman and his disabled wife who, because of back surgery, couldn't go down into the basement to do laundry anymore. Shipping wasn't an issue because, since it's local, he came with his sons to pick it up. All in all, it turned what was, to us, a piece of junk into something that improved someone else's life and kept it out of the waste stream for a few more years.
It's less like eBay and more like a group of folks who don't want to or can't spend money on things, or don't want to see perfectly good stuff go to waste.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
not asking because I know this girl does not exist.
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.
Can you say "regifting"?
That place is just like 10 miles east of here... it's a dump.
Recycle unwanted stuff instead of putting it in landfills?
Old pr0n magazines, send 'em right here!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The moderator of our local group posts under several different usernames (claiming they're not her, even though all the usernames post in the same style and from the same IP) to stir up trouble... bashing Freecycle members and such.
Her co-moderator moved to another state (her Yahoo ID was something like "heyreena") and so the crazy moderator removed her from the group after five months of inactivity. The crazy moderator set up a Yahoo ID like "heyrena" (one E instead of two) and is now trying to pass herself off as the co-moderator who moved... yep, posting with the same IP again. She also deleted all of the co-moderator's old posts in a pathetic attempt to cover her tracks.
And yet Freecycle continues to allow her to moderate a group...
The parent poster is absolutely right.
Artistic women bring joy and warmth to your life.
When you meet one, you'll never forget it.
Hope that helps.
D
I used to work for the evil freeze.com. The thing they knew the best was that when women got on the internet 'free' was one of their favorite words to search for. Free coupons, free screensavers, free recipes you name it.
Where I live in South Texas you dont need this or for anything FREE*.
Set a working air conditioner out by the street in the middle of 105 degree summer day with a sign the says free and it will still be there after then next ice age.
BUT...but a $10 sign on it, run the store and poof....it's gone.
I have a stack right here.
It's cemented together, though.
Grandmas always give you the good stuff.
I happen to agree. The best way to buy and sell used stuff in my area is a good ol' newsgroup: triangle.forsale. It's been around forever, it's used heavily, and there are no stupid blogs or "Web 2.0" crap involved. Post what you want to sell. Contact a seller if you're buying, and drive over and pick it up. I don't understand the needs to make everything online so goddamned complicated.
I don't respond to AC's.
Was that it was full of "I WANTS" instead of "I HAVE'S". And the "I HAVE'S" were generally of no value. If I need something, I'll buy it instead of hunting through hundres of thousands of messages. The 50+ female crowd makes since to me though. My GF's grandmother goes to garage sales every week and brings back all kinds of crap and then brags about how she only paid a dollar for it. Se's quite the bargain hunter. She occassionally comes back with nice stuff. An antique table $15. A P4 PC (with monitor) $20. Personally, I'm not patient enough to go house to house to find a $20 computer, but I guess you look at things differently if you grew up during the depression.
There's no place like ~/
"Why won't this wig come off?"
I just wanted to say that Freecycle kicks ass! I have given and gotten so many great things and everyone that I've met has been very nice.
I started a localized sale and give-away site. All of the functionality is there - list items, post pictures, print a flier, search by zipcode & range, get automatic emails when new items matching a search appear, etc.
I emailed the owners of Freecycle looking for a partnership, and got no response. My guess is that they thought a site that allowed local search would steal their thunder, and didn't want to pitch it to their users, but I think their ability for people to give people a local community of like-minded people would go great with my ability to let people search by range instead of grouping with an arbitrary boundary.
All the rest aside.. I've now found a place to find hot over 50 housewives with lots of goodies they want to give me
Hmm, I think all this spam I get may be brainwashing me!
The only type of "formula" that a child should be having comes out of that child's mother's breasts.
This looks like a pretty useful service. We tend to give away the stuff we don't use anymore to Goodwill. While we like that from a tax perspective, something like Freecycle might be better in the sense that the recipient might appreciate the donation more. If I give a $60 pair of children jeans (which lasted 6 months... never again!) to Goodwill and they sell them for $0.25, would the jeans be as appreciated as if we gave them to somebody who knew just how much our daughter loved those jeans until she grew out of them? I don't think so.
/. have very active (and opinionated) communities but they tend to be far too geek-oriented and global in scope.
:-)
Looks like my local community one is pretty active. I just subscribed. We'll see how it goes.
One thing I already see, though, is that Services are forbidden. That's a shame. Well, not the service advertisements themselves but rather the advice on which services to go with.
I worked for a large corporation for a few years and hated nearly everything about it... except for the internal newsgroups. They were very active and just perfect for advice on services. Say you want recommendations on a pediatrician or family doctor or dentist or cleaning service or lawn service or any number of things like that. Those newsgroups were the perfect mix of a lot of local people with strong opinions on the services they had received. They never once steered me wrong.
I've tried to find something similar ever since I left and have failed miserably. Weblogs are too one-sided and far too distributed. Citysearch (and the like) are too anonymous and rarely have good opinions anyway. USENET is pretty much dead for things like that. Places like
So now I'm in a situation where I want recommendations on a good, trustworthy, local woodworking shop that can custom make some furniture... but I don't know of any place where I can find these recommendations.
Hmm... maybe I can try doing a "WANTED: Advice on Services" on Freecycle and see how fast I'm kicked from it
Hey Rob -- again. I'd been intending to write an aritcle for Sticks of Fire, another community blog, about the success of TampaBLAB, focusing specifically on the community-building: the way it connects people both globally and locally. Aside from the major geographically-based community aggregator blogs that Rob mentioned, and the big ones in DC, NY. LA, and SF, if you are aware of any other community-based blog aggregator that's found similar success (or not), I'd love to hear about them for the story. If this has inspired you to start one, ping me too, since I'd love to devote a portion of the article to people inspired by this story. They really area fabulous way of making local connections and learning what stupendously marvelous talent we have right in our backyard. As for Freecylcers, we had nothing but wonderful experiences with them. People give away entire contents of homes if, say, an elderly relative needs to relocate. Other's give away gift cards they don't intend to us. They often do it because they want to pay-it-forward and/or give back because they've benefited from Freecyclers. Recently, we picked up a treadmill that someone had gotten from Freecyclers -- she'd planned to use it for exercising dogs but it didn't work out. So, she Freecycled it again. There was one that had my partner going for awhile, though. Someone was giving away a Harley. He sat there by the computer and phone, just waiting to see if he'd been the first to respond. Obviously, someone was playing a prank. She claimed someone had hijacked her account. Man, were we disappointed.
What can I say, I wanted a Commodore 64 so that I could rescue some old files. Arrived and was given 18 C-64s, a handful of C-128s, 7 Vic-20s, 2 monitors, a pile if Floppy Drives, 3 cassette drives, software, and a Timex Sinclair.
When I asked the owner how she came to have so many Commodores she replied "Oh, I just sort of collected them one by one."
Three Squirrels
"Local" seems to be big everywhere now. Craigslist, Google Base and Local, Yahoo Local, ebay local, are all the big guys targetting the local market. Rumors of local news aggregates are growing hot as well....
I'm in Houston, and I'm a fan of the popular Kingwood Yard Sales, which is site targetted at a specific community (there are several others around Houston and in other parts of the US). Judy's Book is the "big metropolitan" model, like Craigslist. Some big newspapers I know are aiming at the local online community market as well, trying to stay above water.
The big question for big companies is "where is the money?" which has left the opportunity for small players to fill the niche left behind...the "long tail"...
Tell me, how much does it cost to get an advertorial on /.? I'm being serious. I have a site I want to promote and this seems like a keen way. $50 is about as much as I can afford, though. Does anyone have a link to the rate card?
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
I've met them.
I just didn't marry one.
*SIGH*
I bet the on-line barbie forum attracts a lot of pre-teen girls,
Do you realize what you just unleashed on the Barbie forums?
Also disabled folk -- those of us that can't get out of the house easily often get most of our socialization online, especially if the Internet was around when we were still kids or young adults. Many of us (not me) don't identify publicly online as being disabled outside of the relevant discussion groups, though, so our online presence is often far underestimated.
(Unfortunately, most Slashdotters don't seem to realize that we're here reading, whether "we" is referring to being female or being disabled. At least, that's the kind assumption I prefer to make, given people generally don't make comments about how women are stupid or disabled people should be killed when they're aware a member of either group they're slamming is present.)
Clearly, you appear to have identified yourself as the kind of welfare-dependent, yet materialistic, packrat who typically lives in a trailer infested by rabid dogs and such (NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH IT), but baby formula?
Seriously?! When you get the 300-baud cradle modem working, you buy baby formula from some hippie nutjob online?!?!11
*dials CPS*
Finding the American Dream through repetition > http://tinyurl.com/763fc
I'm group founder and moderator for my local freecycle, and I have NO problem with people who post wanting stuff, even frivolous stuff. Get this: every exchange must have a source and a sink. If it's not available they won't find it, but if it is available and they had never asked, maybe somebody would be stuck storing it or throwing it away. Whatever - an exchange is set up, both parties go away happy, and the total joy in the world rises a small amount. Not a negligible improvement!
However I have posted admin notices warning people that each frivolous feature they stipulate cuts down the pool of possible replies. More people will have "a table" than "a french-polished mahogany table in the Regency style".
Thanks for your good ol' downhome cousin-fucker anecdote, but some of us don't actually live in a trailer in South Bumfuck.
Go back to your beastiality dungeon, er, sorry, "pet store".