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MattG comments on Open Thread, Jul. 20 - Jul. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong
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There is an interesting startup that is about trying to turn cities into villages by trying to make neighbors help each other. You need to verify your address via a scanned document, a neighbor or a a code on a postcard they send you. I think the primary reason they find that verification important is that people are allowed to see the full name, picture and address of people in their own neighborhood. And probably they don't want to share that with people who are not actually neighbors. This seems to be key selling point of this startup - this is how it differs from any basic neighboor based Facebook group, that you really get to see each others face, name and address and people outside your hood really don't get to see it so you can be fairly comfortable about sharing it. Besides you can choose a few categories how you can help others e.g. babysitting, petsitting etc. and what kind of common activities you would be interested in.
Here is the bad news: the startup is currently only available in German and only in the city of Vienna, probably due to the postcard thing. They managed to find investors so it is likely they will have an English version and extend it all over the world, in that case they will probably change the name as well, currently the name is fragnebenan.com But I have no idea when will this happen.
Anyway, I was thinking primarily that Rationalists in Berlin may take an interest in this and help them extend fragnebenan.com to Berlin?
This seems quite absurd. Why would I give my data to an obscure startup (who'll probably sell it sooner or later) and hope people in my neighborhood make the same choice, when I can probably have way better results simply inviting my neighbors for a BBQ?
How many barbeques have you actually thrown?
Of the barbeques you have thrown, how many of those have led to mutually beneficial arrangements?
Of those that have led to mutually beneficial arrangments, how many per BBQ?
Now how much time have you put in to arranging those BBQ vs Value gotten from those BBQs?
I don't know about your answer, but for me (substituting BBQ for dinner party) the answers respectively are probably about 10, 3, less than one, and WAYYY TO MUCH (if these types of arrangments were my only justification for throwing dinner parties.)
Now contrast this to how much time I've spent going through the free stuff offered on craigslist, vs the value I've gotten from it. The effort/value ratio is probably inverse. I think a startup that takes the "free services/free stuff" part of craigslist, but solves the unique problems of that segment (similar to what AirBNB has done for housing) could offer significant value.
I didn't do mere BBQs but threw full-on parties with the neighbors (who I didn't know at all) and other friends. Later two shared apartments in the same house combined held a huge party that spanned the house and included many of the neighbors. Many good friendships came out of that, and a couple of us moved in together later.
The BBQ idea is just a low-threshold variant of that which doesn't require copious amounts of alcohol.
For free stuff, we just have a place in the staircase where people drop things that are still good but not needed by their previous owner (mostly books). This works with zero explicit coordination.
I'm kind of amazed/impressed that this works, based on my experience of communal spaces. Don't people ever leave junk that they can't be bothered to get rid of? Does anyone adopt responsibility for getting rid of items that have been there a long time and clearly no one wants?
The bigger the party, the more investment - This does not scale the same way a website does. Same thing with putting out free stuff on the steps.