Your neighbour(s) could be about to become your newest ‘best’ friend! The latest gizmo from an innovator on Facebook is an application that allows you to see Your Neighbours (or ‘neighbors’ as it originates from that side of the pond!).
Within a mere click and a flick of typesetting keys you can see where your nearest (and potentially dearest) neighbours are that physically residing around you. Spooky stuff!
Creator of Your Neighbours Nathan Blecharczyk of the Harvard network informs his Facebook group that Your Neighbours is designed to give users,
‘… a directory listing of other Facebook users in your vicinity sorted by distance. It facilitates meeting others in your apartment building or neighbourhood who you might not otherwise get to meet.’
This has synergies with the ‘new’ experience of community that is being created by social networking sites such as Facebook and Web 2.0 more broadly, where it seems that the value of shared experiences has replaced previous ‘traditional’ community ties or neighbourhood forms that were based on a physical locality.
So it seems that social networks are becoming more about locating people and ‘Your Neighbours’ in a way that reframes what is a now mobile and digitally connected society.
Perhaps the next version of social relations (a Web 3.0 ?) may well represent a return to physical context and resurgence of neighbourhoods that are about a sense of place within apparent placelessness and with emphasis on geographic residence.
So when both Who AND Where you are matter.
Overall, I am yet to be convinced at how real the demand for this kind of application is. Privacy already remains a top priority and source of contention on Facebook and on other SNS. Not least, as I am frequently reminded by my father, as my own ‘visibility’ across Web 2.0 is already quite apparent, – why he asks would I want to highlight this more?…
One small note, I would recommend that Nathan change the application picture – that is currently a rather creepy child staring up through a mirid of adults – this does nothing to dissipate the potential uneasiness of discovering a someone who could be living next-door.
As more users find out and use this application it will be interesting to see how physical locality and place may be an essential element for a new set of forthcoming community relations. And of course those ‘pop on over’ for a cup of tea possibilities.
Currently, however, at less than 1,000 users located in the UK at the time of writing community pickings do seem rather slim. My nearest and dearest are a mere ‘community; bump-into-able’ 60miles away. But it’s still friendlier than sending a ‘free’ gift or poking. For the time being though you may have a long way to walk…
Perhaps that’s what is really meant by living in the utopic rural idyll.
About Dr Mariann Hardey
I hold the position of Lecturer in Social Media Marketing at Durham Business School. I also spend too much time enjoying social technologies, media+ stuff. That'll make me a Geek then. And a gal.
