What is Outside.in?
Outside.in is organizing user initiated content that combines elements of the web and physical location into unique social environment.
the best way to discover the conversations that are going on in your neighborhood – whether that’s where you live, where you work, or where you want to be. See what locals are saying right now, and share your own wisdom with your friends and neighbors.
In a recent press release, more insight into what they are trying to accomplish with the service:
Beyond ‘where to go’ ‘where to eat’ and ‘what to do’, the site’s new Neighbors and Places features enable users to meet their real-world neighbors online and share their expertise on community issues — everything from school board meetings to local crime to real estate rumors to political campaigns.
“We wanted to create a destination that would amplify the true voices of neighborhood and communities, and what better way to do this but to draw upon the expertise of the people who live in those places?” said Johnson. “With such a stellar group of investors now behind us, we think Outside.in can become one of the premiere Web resources for local information.”
There are a few areas of interest: Neighbors, Places, Stories, and Comments.
Neighbors are members, each with profiles with bio, photo, website and the content that they have written.
Stories include content from other online outlets like blogs, news sources and other web based resources that is submitted by other members to share with the community.
Comments, like Stories, is content about neighborhoods. Unlike Stories, however, this is unique content that is submitted to Outside.in.
Places are user initiated places within a neighborhood and can have stories and comments attached to them.
The website has also integrated Google Maps into their layout to help neighbors find each others and places within different neighborhoods. Take a look at their blog to see what they are up to.
This may be closer to what you were looking for Sean, from my recent post on Social Search
SEO opportunities abound with link building for posts and content that is about a physical location, and those with an actual storefront can use it to build value to your website and online presence along with social networking. Not to mention that it can generate free (extremely targeted) traffic.
What do you think of this new online social destination?
Have you found other valuable resources from Outside.in?
Related Posts >>
- Social Networking 101
- The Value of Trust
- Must Have for Social Optimization
- MyBlogLog and Social Networking for Blogs
- Yahoo’s Brand Universe
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting…I just logged in and registered. Seems like it has potential, but I need to play more. I tried to log a place that was virtual, but still Seattle and couldn’t without a physical address, but I won’t draw any quick conclusions from that. I need to play more. Here’s an example of my odd thought. Let’s say you, me, Lee (www.commoncraft.com) were all at the same conference (or baseball game) and didn’t know it. Could our social tags (web 2.0) combined with location based services notify us of our co-location so we might become a flash mob so to speak and meet? That would be cool.
Thanks for this pointer:)
sean
What a unique twist on local search. I’m glad to see they relaunched (and overhauled their site).
I tried it out and found some of the locations were slightly off with no ability to notify or correct anyone. However, I like the overall idea.
Sean,
I think that there is more under the surface and I am a bit concerned about the scalability of this project. We shall see.
Your idea on the social location tagging has some “big brother” concerns and this is already being addressed by some wireless phone provider(s), the concept is great, but implementing it could be another scalability issue.
Yellowbot,
Thanks for the comment. I would like to know a bit more about your project. When do you plan on launching a visible beta?
I like the idea that you can meet people in your community but like the idea was pointed out earlier, big brother is watching. Someone can be monitoring what is happening in another’s community. I do like the idea of being able to converse over some of horrible restaurants in the area as well as upcoming shows. I’d like to see where this is heading and how well monitored it is going to be.
Inahinu,
What is the point of free speech and opinion if there is fear. New concepts and portals like outside.in give a place to share and should not inhibit fear. There still remains much to be seen with what will be offered, but, so far, the outlook is good, in my opinion.