from Hacker News

Show HN: Little site to help connect the people on your street together

by alance on 7/5/19, 8:16 AM with 10 comments

Sooo I got to thinking about how I don't really want to be FB friends with the people on my street, but that it would still be pretty useful to be able to chat about local issues with my neighbours.

https://streetmates.net

This idea probably isn't going to appeal to HN much. It's not very revolutionary. But there sort of seems to be a bit of a gap for this level of geographically-close, online communication.

I'm thinking of approaching the marketing side of it with small flyers in people's mailboxes, just keep it small, target a street at a time, so that there's a bit of localized inertia in the signups. It definitely has the chicken-and-egg problem (i.e. why would I sign up when no-one on my street has signed up).

If anyone's got any comments, ideas or feedback - then please shout out. There's no monetization strategy behind it (yet), and I very much like the idea of helping to facilitate the creation of little street communities.

  • by quickthrower2 on 7/6/19, 12:21 AM

    If you are all for privacy then please ask for only the street name not the full address.

    This means no online discoverability : you have to talk to your neighbours to get a link, but thats a good thing.

    It also means the geographic boundary is flexible. In the city it might be a floor of an apartment block. In the suburbs a street, or maybe 2 adjoining streets, and in rural areas a region several km around a village.

    Then it can get other non-street but local usages: parents of a school class, local yoga members etc.

    Also less coding: just store a string!

    An example of what the page will look like with posts might make it more enticing too.

    Good luck. Keep selling it!

    I like the idea, the big barrier for me as a user is being embarrassed to contact all the neighbours that I don’t know well. Or fear that no one would join. Maybe some advise about how to tackle that would be good. Or some feel good story of a benefit you got from using it.

  • by codingdave on 7/5/19, 4:43 PM

    I do think this idea is valid. But I've also seen this idea come and go over the last couple decades half a dozen times. I wish I could even remember the names of the folks who have tried it before. If you could research some old attempts at it, and find the founders, having some"lessons learned" conversations with them might save yourself some stumbles and you could get farther with it.

  • by barneythedino on 7/5/19, 9:23 AM

    Thats an excellent idea, really like it. Unfortunately I think it's going to be a problem getting traction, most of my neighbours are retired and not computer literate. But I hope it work out.

  • by robtherobber on 7/5/19, 2:56 PM

    Another potentially problematic aspect of it is that, if it does take off with the people on my street, my inbox is going to hurt, as I receive all posts.

  • by milanspeaks on 7/5/19, 3:51 PM

    Over here in India, we have solved this issue with WhatsApp groups.