"It isn't that I don't mind knowing who my neighbors are, its just that I’d rather meet them on the sidewalk and not in some virtual chat room"
I agree with James - at fatdoor, our mission is to connect people at a neighborhood level - not so much in the chat rooms but - at a neighborhood level. Let me explain what this is about. I have had conversations with a number of people regarding "knowing neighbors". Usually the conversation goes like this:
Me: Do you know your neighbors?
Someone: No, actually I don't...
Me: Don't want to know them, come on, they live around you...
Someone: Sure, but I don't have time... I'm too busy
Me: What if there is a service that introduces your neighbors online and you get to know them before you get a chance to meet then in person?
Someone: Oh, that's interesting, would love check it out, so I know who lives around me
We all know our neighbors, but in the sense of "knowledge" comes in different variations: we say "hello" to them everyday, we wave at them as we drive by - but we don't know their names are or we don't know their interests so on and so forth. That's the social gap that we aim to bridge. To that end, we aggregate interests in any neighborhood and present them as an "interest cloud" (ala tag cloud see below).
So how would one use it? Simply use it to enable offline activity. First you get to know neighbors who share similar interests as you do - and then we let you connect and communicate with them to collaborate better in the neighborhood - by creating a community (eg. a mothers club or a book club etc) around what you really care about.
So the key is: teardown the information-flow-barriers online to create activity offline. That's what we do - and hey if you are interested in helping us, we are hiring :)
