Big Brother Is Bigger Than Ever

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With the growth of online social networks, electronic data, and increasing broadband adoption across the globe, there has been a parallel increase in the risk of your personal information being exposed to whoever wants to take a look.

The websites you visit, what you buy online, the communities and discussions you contribute to — all of these pieces of information are part of the ever-growing mountain of data that advertisers and corporations are dying to get their hands on.

Recently, Facebook has come under a lot of criticism for its feature called “Beacon” that tracks what you buy online outside of Facebook, and then tells your friends about it. Now, I do understand the concept Facebook is trying to accomplish — if I like a product enough to pay for it, then that’s the ultimate recommendation. Adding Radiohead as a “friend” on my profile is one thing, but shelling out $80 for a box set of their latest music speaks volumes.

The catch here is that we don’t like the feeling of being watched. If I want to tell my friends about the products and services that I like, I want to do it in my own way. Not have an automated feed of my buying habits revealed to my family and co-workers on a daily basis.

Privacy is important to everyone. Feeling safe when you are online and feeling like your personal information is secure is crucial for anyone to engage in online social networks.

We found this to be the primary concern for the neighborhoods that we began to set up over three years ago. Privacy was number one. Residents of a community wanted to be sure that their information was secure. It’s one thing to create a profile on MySpace or Facebook where the majority of your interaction is virtual, but users of eNeighbors interact with the people that literally live right across the street.

That’s why we take privacy and security very seriously at eNeighbors. You can be sure that we don’t expose your information to anyone, and you are in complete control of how you choose to participate online. Our ability to grow and promote local community revolves directly around the level of trust the members of that community have with us. We want people to open up and interact with their neighbors. In the end, everyone wins if we all feel safe — especially in our own homes.

Won’t you be my neighbor?

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Study finds that 55% of Americans believe they are less familiar with their neighbors today than their parents were with their neighbors a generation ago.

Three out of ten Americans (27%) don’t know their neighbors first and last names;

Six in ten Americans (59%) who aren’t friendly with their neighbors say it’s because they’re just too busy to create meaningful relationships;

Fewer than half of Americans (48%) have borrowed something, like a cup of sugar, from one of their neighbors

(via FrontPorchForum)

Fatdoor Funding

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Some good progress being made over at Fatdoor today. Sounds like they got a new CEO as well as some investment funding. It’s great to see social networking initiatives in the local neighborhood space getting recognition and traction.

This just further proves that the space is viable and relevant. With the never-ending supply of social networking options these days, it’s getting really tough to focus on the right networks and web apps that give a postive return to the user both online and offline.

Greg Sterling and TechCrunch both comment as well.

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.

Graphing Social Patterns

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Next week in San Jose, there’s a great social networking conference going on. Graphing Social Patterns: The Business & Technology of Facebook is an event for both business and marketing folks as well as techies.

There is an all-star cast lined up to present too. The likes of Tim O’Reilly, Reid Hoffman, and Michael Arrington will all be there. Additionally, Charlene Li from Forrester will be presenting. Charlene’s white papers on social networking have been some of the best material on the subject this year.