I have been thinking a lot about creating localized versions of services like reddit and facebook so that people could be more in touch with what is actually going on around them instead of this kind of national narrative.
It seems unfair that there is only room for so many famous people, so many inventors, so many journalists, because all of the attention (money) aggregates towards the top.
If you could have, say, a local Martha Stewart that actually can subsist and become quite wealthy by sticking to a couple counties in a State, the whole system becomes much more valuable to each individual who participates.
The way it is now your value is almost nonexistent, there is such a high barrier of entry to virality, it's like winning the lottery. What if it was easier to go viral in your own home town, build a career off of it, and never have to make the front page of any national website?
Sorry, bit of a rant, but services like this hint that other people are thinking similarly. I'd like to see a much bigger push into fragmenting the web, and moreso fragmenting the attention share. It moves much like the economy, trickle up.
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.
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).
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!
So Nextdoor will have a competitor soon. I was honestly wondering when this would happen because the geographic based reviews and advertising approach totally aligns with the type of service that Google would NOT kill after a couple of years.
Maps, business reviews and advertising...only makes sense.
Remember sidewalk? There have been a number of players who could have parlayed into nextdoors turf, but have not been successful. Google has the budget and heft, so maybe.
Unless they're going to leverage their monopoly in Search or Android to get into this business, Nextdoor doesn't have anything to worry about. Google doesn't have a history of releasing products that succeed organically.
And they probably will, but that's why the EU's antitrust cases against Google are so important!
Racist busybodies were nattering racists long before they had a social media platform. If anything, platforms like Nextdoor are helping the issue by shining light on it, allowing the nutjobs just enough of a safe space to feel free to talk while letting the rest of us see what they're doing.
Regardless, Nextdoor in my area is hardly toxic. It's actually pretty stale -- mostly a mix of home services referrals and junk for sale. They've cranked up the ad content very significantly over the last year without really bringing/encouraging much in the way of better neighborhood content. I don't know if Google is going to do it any better, but some competition in this space certainly couldn't hurt.
They seem to have gotten the racist freak outs under control in my area. In the last year we’ve moved on to animal welfare freak outs.
A couple of weeks ago there was a thread condemning jogging with your dog. The OP was pretty upset about someone jogging with their dog during the heat of the day. There’s plenty of validity to the concern that someone could overheat their dog, but the crazy just exploded from the woodwork. A flame war erupted and several of the commenters stopped just shy of calling for dog joggers to be stoned.
Nextdoor seems to bring out a special brand of crazy.
My wife somehow became our neighborhood's leader or whatever it's called on NextDoor. Half the stuff is garbage like that. The other half is upper-middle class adults behaving like spoiled children.
My neighborhood was mostly black when I moved here 15 years ago. Nextdoor was definitely the go to place for people moving into the neighborhood and then realizing they were surrounded by suspiciously non-white folks.
For good or bad everyone is now fixated instead on the local homeless encampment after the mayor and ACLU created a situation where those folks can't be dislocated. It's less "how do we help those days unfortunate souls so they aren't in this situation" and more "how did we get rid of these stinky campers bringing down my property value?"
NZ has, https://www.neighbourly.co.nz/ which looks like a local competitor with same name. Things might get a bit confusing here if Google's stars to pick popularity
Yeah, was about to point out the same thing. I’m a little surprised - it’s one thing for a global tech giant to build a service that competes with yours, but it’s another to use exactly the same name. Is that actually allowed?
Took 7 years until there was "Gmail" in Germany, might be harder for google in NZ though if there's a company and not just an individual who holds the trademark.
Prediction: This app is just an A/B test between A = asking the users of the Google Maps app structured questions and B = This app doing so with machine learning & user-powered Q&A.
Depending on how that goes one or the other will be removed within a year.
They already sort of do some checking of their location services with follow up queries in the Android Rewards app. I would swear a large percentage of stores/location it asks me if I have visited recently are stores that I have never heard of but it either thinks I visited or is doing some sort of sanity check to make sure I am answering honestly.
I'm seeing comparisons to NextDoor and/or other hyper-local apps. While this service has the focus at a neighborhood level, the premise seems to be more quora-meets-yelp-meets-neighborhood.
I question these content-generation-as-process apps, and whether users are exhausted of them. One of the reasons I believe NextDoor works so well is that it doesn't try to be the neighborhood reference guide. This is opposed to starting with the premise of answer-a-question, as this service seems to drive. I'm also speaking from the standpoint of my little neighborhood in Seattle, so as with everything -- your mileage may vary.
Just an observation: reading through the mission posted on the site, this seems to be geared toward cities in India? The footer allows for language change and lists "UK English", "India English", and other non-English languages. I wonder if this service intends to support other countries when they release.
Anyone else seeing India specific examples on the landing page? I'm British Asian, and was quite surprised when the first example was a question about a local salwar kameez tailor...
If Google deprecates something = HN complains they deprecate everything
If Google launches something = HN complains they deprecate everything
I Google migrates, renames, merges, spins off, sells = HN complains they deprecate everything
Google Reader was 5 years ago... what other example is there of a successful or even well-liked product that was killed, and not simply renamed or migrated? Picasa albums made it to Google Photos, for example. Google Talk became Hangouts. Where exactly does this meme come from? What product are you mourning that you actually used? Buzz? Wave?
The cynic in me wonders whether this is just a way for Google to "mine the consciousness". They will use the findings from this to feed into another product (Search, Maps, Assistant, etc.) and drop the service in a few years.
So there's a whole card about how safe it is and how no contact info is shared, and right above it is a card where someone has posted with their picture visible, a location marker and a time since they were there. Maybe I'm reading a lot into one example on their marketing page, but I really hope Google has thought through security.
So little to go on, but the big challenge will be how to get value from the inevitably idiotic questions people will ask.
This is a massive problem on Google Maps, it's inundated with questions that are either:
1.answered in the place description that questioners clicked right past
2. not suited to crowd sourcing, such as things that require a rep from the business to approve ("Can I get a children's cot put into room 643?")
And there's the Amazon Q&A issue with answers too: so many responses with "no, I don't know how to answer that", because people don't think enough to realise that not answering is a more appropriate response when you don't know on sites like that!
That's kinda nifty for advertisers, if Google will allow advertising there (which I assume they will). Hyper-local advertising surely has its perks: low cost/high success I think are quite possible.
Twitter tried this (jelly.co) and it didn't catch on.
I think the challenge is that the question base is so broad and most local experience revolves around things to see and do, which is largely a solved problem between Yelp, StubHub, Google Maps and Google Search.
Also, I've found that if people don't want to use the massive number of local reviews already on those sites, they tend to ask their actual friends. Why ask a single random person a question when dozens or hundreds have already posted a review about a local experience?
Interesting. Although the mobile gold-rush is considered over, I think there's still real potential in 'hyper-local' realtime information. There are some examples of this--Waze for traffic, the 'Citizen' app for crime--but there's so much more that can be visible. Power outages, roads needing repair... of course it's (relatively) easy to make an app that tracks all this but the tough part is giving people a reason or incentive to post the information.
It mentions Indian cities specifically in the mission page "In big cities across India, it’s getting harder to get good answers" https://neighbourly.google.com/mission/. I'm a European living in the US, so it's unlikely to be doing some kind of special targeting.
[+] [-] jklinger410|7 years ago|reply
It seems unfair that there is only room for so many famous people, so many inventors, so many journalists, because all of the attention (money) aggregates towards the top.
If you could have, say, a local Martha Stewart that actually can subsist and become quite wealthy by sticking to a couple counties in a State, the whole system becomes much more valuable to each individual who participates.
The way it is now your value is almost nonexistent, there is such a high barrier of entry to virality, it's like winning the lottery. What if it was easier to go viral in your own home town, build a career off of it, and never have to make the front page of any national website?
Sorry, bit of a rant, but services like this hint that other people are thinking similarly. I'd like to see a much bigger push into fragmenting the web, and moreso fragmenting the attention share. It moves much like the economy, trickle up.
[+] [-] icebraining|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gowld|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icedchai|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staplers|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullstackchris|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prostoalex|7 years ago|reply
In what way would it be better than existing town- and neighborhood-specific groups on Facebook or something like /r/LosAngeles?
[+] [-] indescions_2018|7 years ago|reply
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 ;)
[+] [-] armini|7 years ago|reply
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..
[+] [-] reustle|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brown9-2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brightball|7 years ago|reply
Maps, business reviews and advertising...only makes sense.
[+] [-] luddaite|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nautilus12|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IBM|7 years ago|reply
And they probably will, but that's why the EU's antitrust cases against Google are so important!
[+] [-] scarface74|7 years ago|reply
https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/racial-profiling-i...
[+] [-] ajross|7 years ago|reply
Regardless, Nextdoor in my area is hardly toxic. It's actually pretty stale -- mostly a mix of home services referrals and junk for sale. They've cranked up the ad content very significantly over the last year without really bringing/encouraging much in the way of better neighborhood content. I don't know if Google is going to do it any better, but some competition in this space certainly couldn't hurt.
[+] [-] powvans|7 years ago|reply
A couple of weeks ago there was a thread condemning jogging with your dog. The OP was pretty upset about someone jogging with their dog during the heat of the day. There’s plenty of validity to the concern that someone could overheat their dog, but the crazy just exploded from the woodwork. A flame war erupted and several of the commenters stopped just shy of calling for dog joggers to be stoned.
Nextdoor seems to bring out a special brand of crazy.
[+] [-] strictnein|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] technofiend|7 years ago|reply
For good or bad everyone is now fixated instead on the local homeless encampment after the mayor and ACLU created a situation where those folks can't be dislocated. It's less "how do we help those days unfortunate souls so they aren't in this situation" and more "how did we get rid of these stinky campers bringing down my property value?"
[+] [-] lotu|7 years ago|reply
As another poster pointed out in a way the fact that racism is obvious in these platforms is an improvement over it hiding in plain sight.
[+] [-] krisdol|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 40acres|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kinow|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordansmithnz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomK32|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lancewiggs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] berkut|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shalmanese|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prepend|7 years ago|reply
I really wish they would just become a Platform company and let the next doors of the world build on them and let goog take 30% of revenue.
They are bad at network/human stuff. As evidenced by this site “coming soon.”
[+] [-] avar|7 years ago|reply
Depending on how that goes one or the other will be removed within a year.
[+] [-] stevenwoo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrollaway|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|7 years ago|reply
Nextdoor is a hive of NIMBYism.
[+] [-] jroseattle|7 years ago|reply
I question these content-generation-as-process apps, and whether users are exhausted of them. One of the reasons I believe NextDoor works so well is that it doesn't try to be the neighborhood reference guide. This is opposed to starting with the premise of answer-a-question, as this service seems to drive. I'm also speaking from the standpoint of my little neighborhood in Seattle, so as with everything -- your mileage may vary.
Just an observation: reading through the mission posted on the site, this seems to be geared toward cities in India? The footer allows for language change and lists "UK English", "India English", and other non-English languages. I wonder if this service intends to support other countries when they release.
[+] [-] osrec|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parliament32|7 years ago|reply
Is this a feature that's coming out globally or just in India?
[+] [-] duxup|7 years ago|reply
I look forward to the next 'bear in the neighborhood' scare hosted by Google ;)
[+] [-] ninkendo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willart4food|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stvswn|7 years ago|reply
Google Reader was 5 years ago... what other example is there of a successful or even well-liked product that was killed, and not simply renamed or migrated? Picasa albums made it to Google Photos, for example. Google Talk became Hangouts. Where exactly does this meme come from? What product are you mourning that you actually used? Buzz? Wave?
[+] [-] gpmcadam|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zmmmmm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nmstoker|7 years ago|reply
1.answered in the place description that questioners clicked right past
2. not suited to crowd sourcing, such as things that require a rep from the business to approve ("Can I get a children's cot put into room 643?")
And there's the Amazon Q&A issue with answers too: so many responses with "no, I don't know how to answer that", because people don't think enough to realise that not answering is a more appropriate response when you don't know on sites like that!
[+] [-] mrleiter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everdev|7 years ago|reply
I think the challenge is that the question base is so broad and most local experience revolves around things to see and do, which is largely a solved problem between Yelp, StubHub, Google Maps and Google Search.
Also, I've found that if people don't want to use the massive number of local reviews already on those sites, they tend to ask their actual friends. Why ask a single random person a question when dozens or hundreds have already posted a review about a local experience?
[+] [-] firasd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexgolive|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jedd|7 years ago|reply
Nabo is an Australian system, but lacks the features of nextdoor - notably the ability to have subgroups specifically for apartment blocks.
There's a few other systems out there, but they're usually non free, or rubbish, or both.