I had a snail message from them, suggesting I join and I’ve signed up tonight. I know very few people who live around me, so it could be interesting. From my name and postcode on log in, they’ve been able to link my email address to my postal address, so it isn’t hard to see what their business model might be.
Has anyone else played this game?
I’ve just signed up, to give it a look - and frankly I can’t see that I’ll ever use it all that much. I’m on /r/brum, which gives me most of the local knowledge I need.
Yeah, looks crap IMO. Also, wouldn’t let me unsubscribe from emails. Basically Facebook for local communities, which can already use facebook.
Also, they’re owned by a US company, so not that local really.
I signed up a few months ago, but left shortly after. It seems to be for people who don’t want/trust Facebook.
Largely Facebook has solved this problem organically - if there’s demand - somebody sets up a group for the area.
I think it’s different to Facebook’s original friends-of-friends model. This appears to be based on neighbourly co-operation with people you may recognise but not really know - helping out, recycling, finding people with common interests, charity events etc. and ‘monetisation’ comes from charging local businesses to advertise, which seems to be poorly understood by the self-employed I’ve seen complaining about the removal of their free advertisements, couched as community spirit. Perhaps it makes more sense in villages than cities.
I’m still pretty meh on it. It’s attempting to monitise the good will and community spirit that already exists in places. In those places where a community spirit doesn’t exist, I doubt this website will change anything.
Isn’t that what most social networks do, one way or another? They build a network then exploit the confections they have built. This network is just built out of tiny geographical networks that shouldn’t need the Internet. It’s quite interesting politically.
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