Facebook Neighborhoods Application
Published by Mike DeWitt September 20th, 2007 in Facebook, Facebook Applications.
Rating: 
2,000 years ago Archimedes famously quipped “Give me a lever 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 lever 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 mass of participants eager and ready to contribute, and the lever is the compelling experience offered by the system (a combination of content and functionality).
Neighborhoods, from Point2 Technologies, are one such application. Point2’s NLS is a prominent nationwide listing service 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 people in adjoining neighborhoods, your entire city, and other neighborhoods and cities as well!
Get connected to your local neighborhood
For each neighborhood, there is a listing of neighbors and friends, as well as areas to for descriptions, photos, a wall 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 keep in touch in a single network. That all makes sense, right?
See what is going on locally
But there are two actual problems. The fulcrum and the lever. Right 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 total number of neighbors is 62. There are 214 neighborhoods listed under Scottsdale in Neighborhoods. That’s 4 neighborhoods per neighbor. 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 neighbor 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 Point2 figured that it would be their larger core 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 content out in the system today. And even if there were content, an about box, a general Wall, and a block of photos doesn’t seem to make for a thriving community. Finding neighbors and then creating a regular Facebook group would offer us all a lot more. This application has some huge upside potential and some people will find it quite valuable.
I can imagine an application like 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 lever.
Technorati Tags: facebook, neighborhoods, facebook neighborhoods
Mike-
Totally agreed. I reviewed this over at apprate.com (http://www.apprate.com/neighborhoods-135/) last 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 like to see more apps like this. Interesting and useful, with a bit of fun thrown in. And the fact that Point 2 doesn’t seem 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, right on point.
Bryan: “the fact that Point 2 doesn’t seem to have targeted real estate agents and rental agencies to use this as a tool, seems like a major 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 need. Luckily, I added it anyway, and hardly notice the listings that do appear - because I’m not in the market.
If corporate-developed apps are going to gain any traction, they must keep the branding and ’selling’ functionality to a minimum.
Hi Bryan,
Thanks for stopping by and for your kind words. I think there will 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 ground, and Point2 hasn’t done that yet.
Mike
Hi Colin,
I won’t speak for Bryan, but my thought is that Point2 should have targeted Real Estate agents as the people 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.
Mike
P.S. You’re right about not going overboard on direct selling in the app.
A lot of this type of stuff is happening in Groups. The town where I live, a very small one in Ontario Canada, has it’s own group. We have neighbours, past neighbours, videos and pictures. We have general concerns voiced, upcoming and current events noted, and a detailed history of the area, etc. What more could we ask for.
Hi Sandy,
Yes, Groups provide 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 search, and extra functionality - I think 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 post them for people to try to guess and speculate on. That might be fun! Or not. Depends on the neighborhood. But you could see how aggregating stuff like repair shop recommendations, etc. into this app would make it much more powerful!
What do you think?
Mike
It’s entirely possible that I have more to say on the subject.
anyone find any other real estate related facebook apps yet?