Community

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Beyond Local Listings: Can you bring real local communities online?

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

It’s been said that individuals today are increasingly disconnected from their communities. They are “bowling alone”; i.e., although the number of people who bowl has increased in the last 20 years, the number of people that bowl in leagues has decreased. Since people bowl alone they do not participate in social interaction and civic […]

The Other Election Day

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

Today is Election Day. The Other Election Day really—when periodically we as citizens gather to exercise our right to vote for governors, mayors, city councils, propositions, initiatives, referendums, etc. While we peruse the positioning statements of local candidates today, we will all continue to cast votes tomorrow and the next day.
Election fraud? […]

Facebook goes Local?

Monday, November 5th, 2007

In the beginning, there was Facebook. In many ways it was the ultimate hyper-local site. Primarily focused on schools and colleges, it provided a great way for people to stay in touch with folks in their “community” (not to mention to meet new people). However, fast forward a few years and now that […]

Local blogging?

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

Apropos of nothing…Why isn’t there a single online de facto destination for folks to blog about their neighborhoods?
This is a troubling question for those of us who wish to simply share information about our ZIP Code or neighborhood with those who would find it useful. Certainly, for online media powers, it’s the $8.6B question. How […]

Building relevant and useful sites for neighborhoods

Monday, October 8th, 2007

How do you cover a landscape as fragmented and targeted as the 42,000+ neighborhoods/ZIP codes that exist in the U.S.? And what needs to be done locally versus done centrally to ensure a solid consumer experience? As a company that owns ZIP Code Web sites covering most of the U.S., we are dealing […]

Local Connections and Garden Doors

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

Since moving to the Seattle neighborhood of Queen Anne last year, my wife and I have been ardent subscribers to the “Queen Anne Moms” mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QueenAnneMoms/). It’s a fantastic miscellany of questions and perspectives on everything local–including but not exclusive of parenting issues–everything from when to discontinue the binky, to which contractors do great […]

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