The kisok at the center of local information.

I’ve read Russell’s post, When Will Local Truly Be Local On The Web, over and over. Russell gives the best description of the problem with online local information that I’ve seen yet. He’s online all day, but in spite of that, his online experience generally tells him nothing about what’s going on around him.  This kiosk that he snapped near his house gives him a much better idea about what’s going on his neighborhood than he can find anywhere online.

What is it about the kiosk that makes is such a great source of information?  I’ve broken it down to the three P’s of Local:  1.  Proximity.  2.  Priority.  3.  Public.

Proximity

The kiosk is at the center of town.  It’s near the library, the park, the community center and the police station.  If you live here, you can’t help but stumble past the kiosk.  It’s at the center of your local life.  There’s no online source that is at the center of your local life.  There are lots of sites that touch on it, but they’re all skirting around the edges.  How does a website become the hub for everything that is local for you?  Where do you put it so that people who live in a neighborhood know that they’ve got a go to source for everything that they need for local information where they can go to every day and constantly find fresh information?

Priority

The newest stuff is always on top.  When someone ads a flyer to the kiosk, it covers something that’s older and therefore less relevant (at least in theory).  You can tell how important something is by how big it is, the quality of the paper, and the professionalism of the design.  The flyer for the big wine festival is big and nice and on quality paper while the announcement about the garage sale is copied on office paper.  The longer an item is on the kiosk, the more faded it gets from the sun and the weather.  Just by glancing at the kiosk, you get a feel for the priority of a piece of information and this all happens naturally.

Public

Anyone can post anything on the kiosk.  And it’s easy to do.  Just print up your flyer, walk down to the kiosk with your staple gun, and BAM.  You’ve posted.  You don’t need to get a permit or maintain a website or pay a fee, you can just post.  Whatever you want, whenever you want.  And it’s simple.

The holy grail for the local internet is to be the kiosk.  Be accessible to the people in the neighborhood, show them what the neighborhood considers important, and make it easy for people to add information.

At Neighborsville, we’re building a neighborhood service that will be your local kiosk.  It will be accessible to all of your neighbors.  You’ll be able to find things in the course of your day by searching for them on Google, visiting your favorite websites like Facebook or Yahoo or just stopping by.  We’ll make it easy for you to add whatever you want to Neighborsville that you think will be interesting to your neighbors, and your neighbors can help you determine what are the most important bits of information that you should know about.

Our mission is to be your local kiosk.  If you were building your neighborhood’s local kiosk, what would you want to see on it?