| I live in Vermont and use Front Porch Forum (FPF). Here are three observations that I think are important that the article misses: 1. FPF is primarily used via email. You get an email newsletter each day with the latest posts, sometimes multiple times a day. In essence it's just many glorified local mailing lists. Email is universal and mailing lists have been around forever. But what the FPF founders did effectively is organize, manage, moderate and create mailing lists for every local neighborhood in the state and then advertise them to people. Not an easy task and not a bad idea—but it doesn't require anywhere near the infrastructure of a FB or Twitter nor offer anywhere near the features. 2. FPF has a "beg for money" business model. They charge very high advertising rates and then every few months they send out emails about how they don't have enough funding to meet their needs and ask for donations. They're a for-profit company that constantly asks for donations. They even have a donate link [0] right on the bottom of their home page. That really turns me off from them. Sometimes they use the word "subscription" but other times they call it "donations." If it was truly a subscription, they wouldn't accept one-time donations, which they do. They seem to think of themselves as a community service and consider themselves essential to the Vermont conversation, despite also being a for-profit company. I think if they want to have a donation model and be considered critical rural communication glue they should become a non-profit and open source their software. 3. The Washington Post article's premise that important political conversations are happening on FPF I'm sure is true but I think really depends on which community you live in. This is not really one-social network, but instead thousands of mini-social networks (each little local mailing list has its own vibe). In my neighborhood the more substantive political conversations happen on the less moderated Facebook group. Nextdoor was just introduced here a couple years ago and seems to continue to be growing. I suspect over time, with its much greater feature set, it may really challenge FPF. [0] https://frontporchforum.com/supporting-members Overall, it's a good service. Every neighborhood should have a well-organized email list. But let's not pretend this is a Facebook competitor. |