Category Archives: eneighbors

When you move, what’s the first thing that you do?

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Join the neighborhood website…of course. We received the following email from a family moving into one of our neighborhoods: (edited for privacy)

My family and I are moving to Lionsgate at the end of next week from MN. We would like to receive a pin number in order to be able to access all neighborhood events. We would also like to register for the December Luminary Event but we need to have our pin number before we do that. Would you please assist us in getting registered as a member of this community?

I love to hear how our website is making new connections.

This email also points out the good part of requiring a PIN to register. (If you’re not familiar with our PIN registration process, you can read all about it on our website.) First, it provides a way of keeping track of people moving in and out of the neighborhood. And it also ensures privacy inside of the neighborhood, which makes residents feel more comfortable with sharing information, whether that be a phone number or a classified posting.

Property Managers Rejoice!

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We have finally added property managers to the newsletter and bulletin distrubtion lists. Property managers will now receive the weekly eNewsletter for the neighborhoods that they manage. You can change this preference on your profile page to daily, weekly, monthly or not at all.

 You will also receive bulletins as they are sent out starting Friday, November 2nd.

eNeighbors Stats: 9/28 – 10/29

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It’s been awhile since I provided some metrics on our usage and product adoption, so I thought I should give everyone a current snapshot of where we stand as we come up on the end of the year.

Overall, our numbers are still increasing, slowly but surely. We have signed up a bunch of new neighborhoods outside of our core customer base in Kansas City, so we are hoping for some viral effects to kick in outside of KC.

Traffic data:

71,715 page views
8,071 visits
4 minutes average visit duration

26 neighborhoods online

2,797 registered users at 2,628 unique addresses. We now have neighborhoods in Kansas, Missouri, Florida, Virginia, California, Texas and Arizona.

With 9,745 potential addresses in the neighborhoods that have signed up so far, we are at 27% adoption rate for our entire resident base.

The newsletter adoption rate is at 98% of our registered user base with only 34 residents (out of 2,797) opting out of receiving the email newsletter.

Total user-generated content since launch (about 7 months):

News posts: 552
Events: 260
Groups: 60
Classifieds: 496

eBay Neighborhoods

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The recent release of “Neighborhoods” from eBay sort of confused me at first. Initially, I thought it was geo-specific way of finding eBay items for sale in your area (or neighborhood). This is the sort of thing that eNeighbors has been doing on a limited scale with our current online neighborhood classifieds.

However, the eBay neighborhoods are in reality nothing more than groups that share a common interest. Here’s one for the Nintendo Wii. I’m not sure why they called it “neighborhoods,” but once you get past the label, the concept is a very interesting way to connect like-minded individuals who are buying and selling a specific set of products. The local commerce space has recently been making great strides online, and I’m glad to see eBay contributing to the cause.

You can keep up on the latest at the eBay Neighborhood blog.

News Challenge Deadline is today, October 15th

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There are three categories for which you can apply to receive a grant from the Knight Foundation: (1) General Open Source, (2) New Business Ventures, and (3) the Young Creators category.

Today is the last day that you can apply for a grant. I would encourage startups, organizations, academic programs, and driven people to apply for this opportunity if you meet the basic criteria. According to their website, you need to:

  1. have strong digital innovation,
  2. use new forms of news or information in the public interest, and
  3. focus on a specific geographic community.

At the time of publishing, only 227 applications have been posted to the Open Category, and 54 to the Young Creators category. The New Business Ventures category is closed, and as a result, we can’t see how many applications have been made.

How about those young creators? Good for you. They represent 35% of the total applicants world-wide. This is reserved for people 25 years and younger. (Funny, I guess I’m a young creator too…just barely.)

eNeighbors has applied to the New Business Ventures category. I wanted to seek funding from the Knight News Challenge because of the obvious alignments between our organizations:

  1. eNeighbors has a strong digital innovation – online social networking for neighborhoods
  2. eNeighbors uses new forms of news/info in the public interest – neighbors participate in contributing community news and information
  3. eNeighbors focuses on specific geographic communities – neighborhoods

I’m hoping to see some more interesting applications to review.

Local Search: The Future of eCommerce

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How much do you buy online? Depending on your social situation (single, married, kids, etc.), the amount of actual online purchasing can vary greatly. But how often do you research a purchase online regardless of whether you are planning to purchase online or offline?

When it comes to local search, Greg Sterling has some great comments on SEL today. Greg’s comment in his opening statement are of particular interest to me as it relates to eNeighbors. Since our target audience is homeowners in a managed community, the home services are a perfect fit for us to be able to recommend and advertise to our users, but Greg’s comment about products (which I assume to mean pretty much anything) tell me that every transaction whether on or offline starts at the local level since that’s where we all live.

In other words, we all live in a local community no matter where we are. This local community which houses our friends and family is the largest influence on our buying habits. Our local habitat dictates our entertainment options, our habits, hobbies, etc. You get the idea.

I think the real insight here is this — to sell a product (any product) how much more effective would that sales process be if it were approached from a local level? Obviously, it would be exponetially more effective. It would be like a door-to-door salesman for the entire world. In the past, this approach has not been very cost-effective for obvious reasons, but with the recent adoption of the web’s social networking features, this type of sales approach is now possible.

So, once again I’m advocating the use of a bottom-up approach to local search. In this case, as it directly relates to local commerce. Ironically, the internet may be the vehicle to bring back the feeling of community and localness.

Email Trouble

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We were having some email trouble yesterday between 11:00am and 6:00pm. If you sent in a support or PIN request and haven’t heard back from us, please resend your request to support [at] eneighbors [dot] com.

As of now, all support requests that we received have been closed. So if you’re waiting to hear from us, we do not have your request.

Behind the Curtain

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Just wanted to drop a quick note to everyone. We are still here.

Sorry, the blog’s been a little inactive lately. We are working hard on some internal stuff right now here at eNeighbors that will hopefully bring all of our customers some great new stuff, and ultimately will provide an even better product for neighborhood communities.

Can’t say much more than that right now, but we should be back next week with more of the ususal insightful posts on the ever-changing online world of technology.

In the meantime, go pick up a new iPod Touch this weekend, yet another great product from one of my favorite companies.

Sidenote: I’m so glad I didn’t buy an iPhone yet — see $200 price drop. ouch!

Friends List: Face-to-Face or Virtual?

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Information Week has an interesting article up titled “5 Keys To Social Networking Success” by Andrew Conry-Murray.

One of the five keys is that successful social networks should facilitate interaction among a close-knit, pre-existing circle of companions who have existing relationships. In other words, I should be able to find my friends on the site.

But there’s an exception to this rule…

“The exception to the friends characteristic are groups that coalesce around profound experiences, such as pregnancy and childbirth or a cancer diagnosis. These groups form expressly to connect with strangers who are sharing the same experience. However, other characteristics certainly apply.”

What I like about this is that eNeighbors is the perfect example for the exception rule. You probably don’t know every person that lives in your neighborhood, but you still share common interests, goals, and concerns.

The other great thing I like about Andrew’s explanation of the exception is that this common experience connects these previously disparate people. eNeighbors takes it a step further — you can literally connect with these people right outside your front door, face to face.

I know, it’s shocking to think of real, physical interaction with people in this ever-increasing online world. Maybe that’s the defining point of a “highly” successful social network. After all, that’s what MySpace started doing with band concerts.