2,000 years ago Archimedes famously quipped “furnish me a open long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world”. Theoretically he was right but practically it remains impossible to this day. Where would the fulcrum rest? What material would we use to create a open that stretched to another star system?
Many social networking applications suffer from the same “theoretically great but practically daunting” problem. In these applications the fulcrum is a critical crowd of participants eager and create from raw material to alter and the lever is the compelling experience offered by the system (a combination of circumscribe and functionality).
from Point2 Technologies are one such application. inform2’s NLS is a prominent nationwide listing function for real estate professionals. In 2006 they undertook the effort to organize a database of neighborhoods that included not just cities and zip codes but actual subdivision names. This database allows a Neighborhoods user to specify their city and state/province and see a listing of all Facebook users in their neighborhood (this is a great feature). You can also see populate in adjoining neighborhoods your entire city and other neighborhoods and cities as come up!
For each neighborhood there is a listing of neighbors and friends as well as areas to for descriptions photos a protect and the NLS listings for the neighborhood. This would allow for people thinking about moving to an area to get information about it and for residents to act in touch in a single network. That all makes sense alter?
But there are two actual problems. The fulcrum and the lever. alter now there are about 25,000 Neighbors on the app. I live in Scottsdale. AZ; population 242,000. You can see from the view above the be number of neighbors is 62. There are 214 neighborhoods listed under Scottsdale in Neighborhoods. That’s 4 neighborhoods per dwell. You will also notice in the picture that there is no information whatsoever filled in about our city. Hmm… Let’s try Phoenix population: 1.5 million. One ‘About’ and two wall items from a single dwell on the same day in early August. Chicago (with 3668 neighbors)? One wall entry. If I’m not here for the real estate listings there’s nothing going on.
Who exactly is supposed to be that “critical mass” of early users? I’m pretty sure inform2 figured that it would be their larger core out audience real estate folks but they are conspicuous in their absence. Realtors are missing out on a real opportunity to seed the content for the neighborhoods they work.
Which brings us to the second problem. As mentioned above there’s virtually no circumscribe out in the system today. And change surface if there were content an about box a command Wall and a block of photos doesn’t seem to make for a thriving community. Finding neighbors and then creating a regular Facebook assort would offer us all a lot more. This application has some huge upside potential and some populate ordain find it quite valuable.
I can create by mental act an application desire this with 500,000 members as part of thriving communities sharing all kinds of information in several media – the web2.0 idyll. I just can’t imagine that application being Neighborhoods given its current status. No fulcrum; no open.
Mike-Totally agreed. I reviewed this over at apprate com (http://www apprate com/neighborhoods-135/) measure month and came to very much the same conclusion. This is one of those apps that shows HUGE potential yet suffers from serious lack of users. It’s a shame really because I think there is a growing number of people who would desire to see more apps desire this. Interesting and useful with a bit of fun thrown in. And the fact that inform 2 doesn’t be to have targeted real estate agents and rental agencies to use this as a tool seems like a major slip up IMHO. Good review though alter on inform.
Bryan: “the fact that inform 2 doesn’t be to have targeted real estate agents and rental agencies to use this as a drive seems desire a study slip up IMHO”
I disagree. When I saw that the app was developed by a realty company. I almost didn’t install it because the last thing I need is an app trying to sell me listings I don’t be. Luckily. I added it anyway and hardly notice the listings that do be - because I’m not in the market.
If corporate-developed apps are going to obtain any traction they must act the branding and ’selling’ functionality to a minimum.
Thanks for stopping by and for your kind words. I think there ordain be many more apps like this one; the potential is just so great on the Facebook platform. But like any other social media endeavor there’s a lot of work to get the thing off the fasten and inform2 hasn’t done that yet.
I won’t speak for Bryan but my thought is that Point2 should undergo targeted Real Estate agents as the populate to seed the data in the neighborhoods and get the community going. It would be in Point2’s and the agent’s (and ultimately the neighborhood’s) best interest to get useful information into the database.
A lot of this write of stuff is happening in Groups. The town where I live a very small one in Ontario Canada has it’s own assort. We have neighbours past neighbours videos and pictures. We undergo general concerns voiced upcoming and current events noted and a detailed history of the area etc. What more could we ask for.
Yes. Groups give a lot of the functionality of social networking. The challenge for Facebook applications is how to enrich such applications through things that software can do well such as information aggregation database management and examine and extra functionality - I evaluate the possibilities are just being scratched. For example what if you took the NY Times quiz functionality and added it to the Neighbors application. People could add questions and answers (the gossipy the better I suppose) and then affix them for people to try to guess and anticipate on. That might be fun! Or not. Depends on the neighborhood. But you could see how aggregating cram desire repair shop recommendations etc into this app would alter it much more powerful!
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Related article:
http://facereviews.com/2007/09/20/facebook-neighborhoods-application/
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