I’m excited to announce that eNeighbors has reached a new milestone today – 16,000 homes are now registered to use our service across 85 neighborhoods. This means that there is at least one registered user (homeowner) in 16,000 homes in the neighborhoods that we serve. To put this in perspective, we’re getting close to filling Kemper Arena (Kansas City reference). Next, we’re gunning for Arrowhead Stadium.

From those 16,000 homes there are 17,728 registered users (some homes have multiple users).

In total, there are 31,191 homes that are currently eligible to use our service, which means that in aggregate, 51% of eligible homes are now registered.

Here are some of our best neighborhoods, in no particular order:

1. Nottingham Forest South – 583 homes, 526 are registered, 649 residents registered
2. Hampton Place – 462 homes, 345 are registered, 383 residents registered
3. Communities of North Brook – 894 homes, 625 are registered, 681 residents registered
4. Nottingham by the Green – 733 homes, 495 are registered, 567 residents registered
5. Riss Lake – 728 homes, 561 are registered, 640 registered residents

I want to say thank you to my team for getting us to this point: Natasha Stock, Dan Stock, Shelly Stock, Phil Freund, and Kim Goings.

Google announced that it will be adding “site speed”, how quickly a website responds to web requests, as one of the data points it uses to rank its search results – meaning that if your site is slow, you’ll be pushed down the ranking making it harder for people to find your website. This also means that you’ll be rewarded in Google’s search ranking if you have a fast website.

They also created a new tool for webmasters to use to determine how fast their site is, according to Google anyway. I used their tool to find out how fast our site was and posted the results below.

Performance overview

On average, pages [on eNeighbors.com] take 0.6 seconds to load (updated on Apr 14, 2010). This is faster than 97% of sites. These estimates are of high accuracy (more than 1000 data points). The chart below shows how your site’s average page load time has changed over the last few months. For your reference, it also shows the 20th percentile value across all sites, separating slow and fast load times.

If you want to try it on your site, go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools and click Labs –> Site Performance.

As we embark on the new year I’ve noticed that a lot of HOAs are looking for ways to save money. As I’ve mentioned before, the number one way that we save HOAs money is by replacing their paper newsletter, but more recently, it seems that HOAs are reconsidering their paper directory too.

Most paper directories are actually distributed free of charge in exchange for the right to sell advertising. However, advertising is shrinking for many companies in the “paper medium” and it seems that neighborhood directories are also feeling the squeeze, so they are scrambling to change their business model from free to subscription. To avoid this new fee, many HOAs are simply relying on their online resident directory with eNeighbors.

What is your neighborhood doing? Do you have a paper directory? Are you keeping it? Please comment below.

Here’s an example from one community: