Neighborhood Social Media

When I first set out to publish my blog on the worldwide web in 2007, I had in mind a reading audience that itself was worldwide.  This did happen, but to only a small extent: I didn't promote my blog as others do, but rather wrote my (usually) daily articles as a personal exercise in writing.  Still, readers would sometimes respond from other parts of the U.S.A. and other countries.  But back then, blogging was considered the primary means of social media on the Internet...MySpace was in itself a blogging site and many enjoyed its user-friendliness.  But when Facebook started, much of the blogging community switched over to that format and it become more socially networked around people's personal friends, family, acquaintances, and associates...and the more cosmopolitan nature of the blog dwindled as the web drew in on itself.  I resisted Facebook for a few years...although I had nominally been a member...until I realized that my blog readership had diminished along with that social media site's rise.  So in early 2013 I began to link my blog articles on Facebook and work to increase my readership by that means.  But it took away the more random sort of reader just the same...that's a shame, in my opinion...

Although Facebook does the service of bringing people one already knows closer together in a communication network, it is still lacking in a geographical sense.  How well, for example, do you know the other residents in your own neighborhood, and how well are you keeping up with events that are going on there?  I'm not talking about gossip, but rather things like crimes such as burglaries or vandalism, social events, helping people in various states of crisis or emergency, lost and found pets, advertisements for services like lawn care or handiwork, things wanted to buy or sell, unrestrained dogs, and so on.  A few weeks ago a friend pointed me to a site called NextDoor.com that specifically works to establish communication networks within residential neighborhoods.  Free to join, NextDoor members can choose to become actively engaged in interaction through posts with neighbors on the site or can, like me, sit back and read others' postings to see what's going on in my subdivision.  Because people tend to emphasize their privacy within neighborhoods and many assert their right to rule their own "castles" aloof from others living around them, the general sense of community in a geographical zone between residents is tenuous and the communication is usually much more formal on NextDoor.com than it is on Facebook, which typically features folks being more themselves and relaxed...even silly...after all, the "Facers" are among those they are familiar with.  Besides, we're not quite sure exactly who some of these neighbors of ours really are, are we...

So with NextDoor and its current serious, down-to-business, minimalist tone, I'm not inclined to be posting links to any blog articles of mine in the near future as I do on Facebook.  I also have a Twitter account, though, and think that this may be a way to go in the other direction and promote my blog more nationally...and internationally among people at-large, not just among my own circle of family, friends, and associates.  Do you have a Twitter account...if you do, do you post on it or, like me, just follow others?