Need to Borrow Sugar? NeighborGoods Wants to Help
Borrowing a rake or cup of sugar used to be a matter of just stopping by your neighbor's apartment. Now even that's gone online, thanks to a new service launching in Los Angeles called NeighborGoods. The brainchild of L.A. Derby Dolls player and former Revver director Micki Krimmel, NeighborGoods builds on the Craigslist and Freecycle models, using a hyper-local bent and the idea of borrowing or renting what you need, rather than selling or trading for keeps.
"I was really inspired by Freecycle, Craigslist, and of course eBay. They are really good at getting rid of things you don't want anymore, but I wanted to tackle the problem from the other side: how do you keep things from being produced. Does every house on the block need a lawnmower?," Krimmel told ReadWriteWeb.
NeighborGoods is currently in alpha testing and accepting users by invitation until October 7th, when it launches publicly. But it is already gaining traction on Twitter (where Krimmel has over 12,000 followers) with people who have early access to the website, like @typefiend, who shared this note:
"Set up my first #Neighborgoods transaction. Someone's borrowing the Bissell Carpet Cleaner for some pet cleanup. http://bit.ly/lh6gR"
Krimmel said she's reaching out to church groups, school groups, green organizations, and mommy groups to get them active on the site and to help identify what goods and services NeighborGoods should target. The site will also launch a Facebook Connect feature.
"We think people will share with people they know at first," says Krimmel. "We want to get people over that hurdle and start telling the story of things: power tools, ladders, camping gear, bicycles. Those are the things we all have in the garage that don't get used very often. I'm hoping that the groups feature will have people sharing all kinds of crazy stuff."
NeighborGoods is fairly intuitive to use, but its success will depend on the quality and usefulness of items offered by the community. A quick look this morning found items ranging from an old analog TV to a wireless router to someone's dog (condition "beat up"). The policing of what's made available and whether the site monitors users will be key to its development. Users are rated, similar to how sellers are ranked on eBay, but what's not clear is what recourse someone has if they don't get a favorite book back or a neighbor breaks their lawnmower.
The service is one of several new barter-type platforms to emerge in the past few months. Where Couchsurfing left off with the post-college hostel crowd, Caravan is picking up, providing access to house-swap listings and rentals for creative professionals. And hungry Angelenos are using Fallen Fruit to find in-season treats from trees around L.A.
All of these projects seem to have a two-fold purpose: getting resources that you need or want, and making new friends in the process. Is using NeighborGoods easier or more productive than just ringing the doorbell? That remains to be seen.
Guest author: Laura Hertzfeld is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. In addition to writing for ReadWriteWeb, she is managing editor of EconomyStory.org, a Public Radio Exchange (PRX) project aggregating public media coverage of the economy.
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Excellent idea! I'm off to see if I can secure an alpha invitation. I love to be a champion of new ideas and have over 10,000 followers at Twitter and am very active at StumbleUpon, FriendFeed and cliKball (which is where I first saw this) too.
I have neighbors who have time, trucks, trailers, tools and equipment. They could be of great assistance to many who traded their own trucks in when gas and diesel prices spiked last year or who only need a welder or paint sprayer once every few years.
Thanks for the post, Laura!
One of the primary values of NeighborGoods is that it is easier than just ringing the doorbell. You can log in and see at a glance what is available to you and who owns what. It's a neighborhood inventory system. In fact, we hope it will encourage people to have a reason to ring more doorbells.
Additionally, we've all kinds of protections in place to make NeighborGoods a safe place to share. First of all, you control who has access to your stuff. You can limit your items to just your friends if you like and you have to approve every request. But sometimes, things do go wrong. And for that, we've got a cool way for members to work it out amongst themselves, the panic button.
The panic button is our peer to peer conflict resolution system. If someone doesn't return an item to you or returns it broken, you can push the panic button. The panic button sends a message to the person (as well as to us) and marks his/her profile with a very visible public alert that can be seen by everyone on NeighborGoods: "This user is involved in an unresolved transaction problem!" The alert remains on the profile until they resolve the issue with you and you remove it.
We're looking forward to learning more about how to improve the service once we open the doors in LA on Wed.
This is great! There is also already neigh*borrow.
Posted by: forteller.net
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October 4, 2009 2:53 PM
BTW: Will NeighborGoods only be for people in the US, or will it be possible for us Europeans, and others, to join in too?
Posted by: forteller.net
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October 4, 2009 2:57 PM
@forteller.net Right now it's US only because we're using US zip codes for location but we certainly hope to expand and be available everywhere! Thanks for your interest.
I think the idea is wonderful. I personally have not had very good luck with Craig's List. Even some people on Free Cycle tend to abuse the system so I am really curious to see if sites like this will promote hospitality and being a good neighbor or if it will be taken advantage of by some who are not so neighborly.
A similar Australian service worth checking out is Rentoid - http://www.rentoid.com
This is awesome. I’m uploading my shareables now. Sean is right on the money when he says this is going to help everyone with the reduction of clutter and needlessly spending on those one-time-use items.
Everyone should sign up, but especially the person who can loan me a yacht. I need to borrow one of those, just for a bit…
There is a similar website in France : ma-residence.fr
I am its community manager.
Local based websites are a pretty great opportunity for people to find stuff and to strengthen social tie. However one great idea needs the support of a critical mass of users... Thats why there is no website, except Craiglist, which got success.
In France ma-residence.fr is more than just a tool to find stuff. It allows Committee of Joint Owners to manage their building alongside with their trustee. Tenants and woners can easily see what's going on in their neighborhood (cityhall, associaitons, shops, schools),...
All of these elements are pretty great on just one condition: that people use the website. Thats why we are launching the website city by city (we learned from our mistakes since the website exists since december 2007)
So, I hope NeighborGoods will reach a critical mass of power users and I'll use the service if we can register out of the USA
Bright Neighbor beat them to the punch and has thousands of active users in the Portland beta... the nation-wide version will be available this November.
The good news is that sharing behavior is becoming more culturally acceptable in America as we learn there is no return to the wasteful ways of the past.
Clever clever.... Neighborhoods + goods = neighborgoods!
I love the idea of this site. It's borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbor times 100. It's a chance not to borrow "stuff" but to build community. In a city like Los Angeles where everyone is always driving, I'd like to think a site like this can make us more aware of our neighbors and just how many other "cool" people are out there. Great job Micki!
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