It’s neighborhood-based:  a private social network for your specific neighborhood.  You must use your real name with this one, and your real address.  It’s been around awhile, but is expanding to many more neighborhoods.

If you don’t live in a specific neighborhood, you can’t join that one, nor see anything in that network.  Also, if you move away, you’re no longer able to be a part of that neighborhood network.

In this type of social network, things are much more personal, and private info is more readily divulged and leveraged.  For example, you can post queries regarding neighbors’ experiences and recommendations with various tradespeople and professionals:  Mowing services, auto repair, doctors, dentists, etc.  If you pet is missing, you can include this in Neighborhood News.  Was a home burgled?  You’d be interested in knowing that.

Need a babysitter?  Giving away an old desk?  Need a bookcase?  These needs are “local,” and local resources exist.  It’s more targeted, personal, and perhaps immediate than something like Facebook, for example.  Maybe you’re looking to join, or post, a carpool.  How about starting a nanny-share?

Any downsides?  Boundaries are sometimes arbitrary – maybe some folks you’d like included are outside a certain zone that is normally an inclusion to your neighborhood in other contexts.  You can lobby the “Lead” of a neighborhood, if you like, in seeking a change to boundaries.

Also, sometimes condos or apartment houses get chunked as one entity/address, but that’s being worked on.  Be aware that if a network like this is ever hacked, your name, address, and any personal info you’ve posted might be accessed – a home full of valuable antiques doesn’t need a high-profile, for example.  iOS and Android apps are coming.

And now, I have to query my neighborhood as to where I left my bike after that block party…

Security involves so much more than physical protection and means of recovery for data; or content.

It also comprises educated use of data.  Best use of data.  Appropriate use of data – as well as prudent dissemination.  Be very wary of that which you consider propagating:  Some actions are irreversible.

Consider the case of UCLA student Alexandra Wallace.  She made what she considered a funny video regarding Asian students and, again in her mind, their rudeness in talking on mobile phones in the school library.  In the video, she spoke into a phone with what appears to be her assessment of how many Asians sound, using a sort of Asian-mimicking dialect – if I may.  An exaggerated imitation.  Yikes! – even I have to be careful here, lest I say something that can be taken the wrong way.

Alexandra’s video went viral, of course, resulting in what she says is harassment to her family, death threats, and “publishing of my personal information” – whatever that may be.  For these reasons, she has chosen to withdraw from UCLA.

She withdrew the video from YouTube two days after it was posted; of course it was too late.  It was all over the web by then.

It’s important to note, and we’ve spoken of this before, that our lives are now “Personal-Technology Weaves” – it’s sad to note that in 2011, even young people have not been apprised of the great risk (in addition to the great benefits) to be had on the ‘net. 

Any tool, any enablement, any means or mechanism for the blast of information, must come with an accompanying set of warnings and instructions for best use.  Educators, starting in 1^st grade in my mind, should be making exposure of perils, as delivered through the enormous leverage content has and its efficient propagation.

Make sure you, and those around you, understand the risks as well as the benefits.  Make sure  your staffs at work understand.  Your kids.  Your co-workers:  Consider; someone may well blast something of yours to the wrong place.  It may be legitimate work-content, but if they violate an Obligation of Confidentiality, for example, or just disseminate the wrong interpretation of content, to clients, for example… everyone’s in trouble.

Be careful out there.

NP:  Jesse Colin Young, Songbird, on LP.