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I couldn't disagree more :)

The fantastic thing about the Internet is that it reduced those silly restrictions, like geography. There are still neighborhoods, but they're based on something more significant than where you happen to live.

And I don't agree that you have to be front page of any national website. Did you ever see Gibi in one? Probably not, yet she has almost 1M people following her and makes a living out of it. She's a celebrity in her town - it's just that the town is called "ASMR" rather than "Boston" or "Philadelphia".

That doesn't mean the current model doesn't have flaws, but I don't think returning to the past will solve any of them.

It also doesn't mean geography isn't important in some cases; I would certainly support good local reporting, for example. But only when it makes sense for the purpose, not as a sort of informal trade barrier. The Martha Stewart of my home town? No thanks.

http://nextdoor.com is the leader in this space.

Yeah, I'm on to check out nextdoor right now and see how many problems it solves for.

I joined a few months ago and found it is mildly useful, and I consider that a compliment. It works for what it is, doesn't try hard to be something it isn't, and actually makes you feel a bit more part of a community. I think the key in using it is to not treat it like reddit/facebook/whatever, and avoid having discussions with people except in a polite manner. Flaming out in a discussion with some other geek on the other side of the country is very different than pissing off your neighbor that is a prominent figure at your kid's school.

I was very wary of it, but now feel ok recommending it with that provision. Tread lightly ;)

I joined too, because of their aggressive (in a nice way) marketing effort: every user who joins is encouraged to invite 3+ people, to whom physical paper postcards will be mailed out.

I was skeptical at first, but it turned out to be more than I expected.

In some ways, it's a downside: turns out I'd rather not know what kind of opinions my neighbors have on issues like housing projects and public transportation, and have PSA with security camera pictures in the feed whenever a suspicious (read: minority) person walked past someone's home.

On the other hand, perhaps it's for the better not to live in a bubble.

I use it (lightly), but found it mostly full of useless information like neighbors freaking out because a car of minorities drove through their neighborhood and looked suspicious.

Then, I found this Twitter account that just shares all of the hilarious things they see on Nextdoor and it is pretty funny: https://twitter.com/bestofnextdoor

I didn’t like having to give them my real address or phone number. I hope the Google version of this is a little more lenient, but I doubt it will be.

Would you prefer all users be allowed access to any neighborhood group they choose?

No, I would prefer that they just use my geo-location.

I wouldn’t even mind if they asked me every couple of months or so to verify my location.

And how would they verify it?

Spoofing geolocation is possible too.

Big deal. How many people are actually going to go to the trouble to do that to talk to people in my neighborhood where they don’t even live?

I could have easily tricked Nextdoor into doing whatever I wanted to. But shouldn’t have to waste my time.

Yes. Otherwise you end up with carve outs like happened to a friend in Bellaire, TX. The City of Bellaire uses Nextdoor to send out emergency alerts and other useful information, but the citizens and not the city decide the Nextdoor boundaries for "City of Bellaire".

So my friend who lives in a neghborhood of condos that the snobs in million dollar homes intentionally left out can't get the alerts from his own municipality.

Nextdoor is not so supportive and useful as it is positioned. They mostly for seniors, house owners to keep an eye on security in their neighborhoods rather than to really help each other, IMHO.

I’d say Chummy (https://chummyapp.com) is the social network of local reciprocal help Neighbourly is heading to become. The major differences between the most popular social networks in the US, though, got illustrated there: https://chummyapp.com/why-chummy/

We had this in the 80's and 90's with dialup BBSes. With the Internet / web, we lost the local "community" feel...

There's still some out there (telnet), but mostly old Sysops, and Ansi/Ascii artists... It's not nearly the same as hitting local boards.

It is just as cheap to access a telnet server half way around the world as one next door, so bringing up telnet is changing the subject.

Yep, I used to run one... The problem is the "local community" aspect is gone... anyone can connect to these boards, but most people don't know how (or care to know.) It's not like the old days...

This is exactly why I believe a fractioning of current America into smaller countries (think Roman Empire -> Europe) is not only inevitable, but an overall net good.

Yes! I've thought of an idea similar but more for edge cases (maybe even interesting trivia?) in the community that you couldn't find online - e.g. "is mom and pop's pizza place open right now?" (Its Sunday and they don't have a website).

> creating localized versions of services like reddit and facebook

In what way would it be better than existing town- and neighborhood-specific groups on Facebook or something like /r/LosAngeles?

I'm not proposing anything specific so it's hard to respond to this question.

There are many things that make subreddits and local facebook groups not work, though, and that's a lack of value to the user. They are there for you to use, or not, and their value comes from participation only.

Facebook isn't going to add a feature for your community. Reddit isn't going to help moderate your subreddit. These large companies make money off of the national-level mindset, so their local offerings are kind of "take it or leave it."

That they come with scum filtering is a pretty attractive feature of big platforms like reddit. It's not going to help with the moderation that builds a community, but it isn't worthless either.

>>> other people are thinking similarly

In lieu of re-creating existing social media. Which tends to scale down quite nicely. I'd focus on a single neighborhood "vertical" that boosts partcipation. Say a lending library of physical books. Used baby furniture and children's toys. Or even laptop recycling drives for schools. Distribution is as easy as printing flyers and putting them in mailboxes!

Good luck ;)

Peertal is also a cool alternative, you can even go as far as paying & rating your Neighbours.

Here's what the map view looks like: https://peertal.com/#/map-view

Here's the video pitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkyH3JRxndc

Android App https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.peertal.io...

iTunes App https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peertal/id1238992138?mt=8

Disclaimer, I'm the founder so feel free to ask me any questions or give us feedback. We're still learning the ropes..

Love the concept of payments. This is one feature the rest of the world is lacking compared to Asia. Goodluck with your project.

Why on god's green earth would anyone want their neighbors to rate them?

Lol. Hey someone add a facial recognition or NFC feature so I can identify all the people leaving dog poop or trash in my yard. I'm gonna rate the hell out of those guys.

I would contribute to a project like this. Instead is subreddit urls it's neighborhood or town name? Does Brooklyn have one but also NYC? Park Slope?

Subreddits for local cities do an ok job of this, actually. The problem is that they are very basic and essentially "fan-made" (when the city gets involved it actually goes down hill). There's no ability to add features or anything so it's only serviceable.

I do recommend people participate in their local subreddit though because it's one of the few examples of this that I see working out there.

Facebook Groups already fills this need for a lot of neighborhood groups.