Wednesday, July 9. 2008

Localism.com: "world's most complete neighborpedia."

Localism.com launched as a community site for real estate professionals, but now is expanding to include the public in defining local communities and collecting content about them. The discussion at Inman.com makes it sound a bit like hyperlocal news + social networking + crowdsourcing for real estate. Posts are reviewed to insure they match the the geography of relevance. Key soundbite from CEO Jonathan Washburn, of ActiveRain the company behind the site:

It is a social network based around communities. We're trying to bring the geographic community back to the beginning -- to bring people close together who are really close in proximity.

Business model?

There is a revenue model: Users can sponsor communities, at a cost ranging from $7.50 to $15 per month per community, depending on the volume of sponsored communities. There can be only one sponsor per community.

Sponsorships give more visibility to community members at the site, and allow them to post advertising links.

ActiveRain wasn't the first or only one heading down this path; Move Inc., which owns Realtor.com, discussed a similar plan last year, potentially using ActiveRain as a partner. That didn't play out and now ActiveRain is suing Move.

I'm a bit skeptical non-real estate folks will jump into this site when it opens to the public in August. I will however be interested in how those trying to draw the lines between neighborhoods tap into this new resource.