When Garret Hargrave (he of Walter Street Chili Cookoff fame) emailed me to several months ago to tell me about his latest unemployment hobby, www.neyber.com, I thought, “Huh. That’s neat,” and then went back to my facebooking and tweeting and foursquaring and promptly forgot about our own local online social network.
I’d occasionally hear someone mention it and say, “Hey, that’s right! I need to go check that out!” Finally, a few weeks ago, I created a profile and poked around a bit.
Garret cobbled the site together using various third party platforms and readily admits that he isn’t a web developer. He shares that some of the features include:
- Profile –- Share information about who you are and what you do (work, hobbies, etc). You can share as much or as little information as you want, and you control your privacy on who can see your information.
- Groups –- Create groups or join existing groups to share information specific to the group and its members (e.g., The Walter Street Chili Society, Walter Street July 4th Party, Walter Street Third Thursday).
- Invite –- Expand your influence by inviting more of our Capitol Hill neighbors to join and connect with people in the neighborhood.
- Find Neighbors –- Find and connect not only with neighbors you know well, but also neighbors you would like to get to know better.
- Events –- Share information about local events you are attending or sponsoring through your company or organization.
- Blogs –- If you like to write blogs, post a blog here and share it with everyone in the neighborhood.
- Marketplace –- Need to get stuff out of your house … sell it or give it away in the local marketplace.
- Q&A –- Ask questions and get answers from your neighbors.
Neyber.com isn’t on track to replace facebook any time soon, but I’ve found it to be a good supplement with a lot of potential. Like any social network, it’s only as strong as its users. I think there’s a place for Neyber.com alongside our neighborhood blogs and listservs and I encourage you to sign up and give it a try. Of course online interaction is never a replacement for getting out and saying “hi” to your neighbors, but sometimes circumstances conspire to make that the only way for us to get to know each other and stay up on each others’ lives. Oh, and when you sign up, feel free to add me as your friend!