People who need people are the luckiest people in the world. Even online.

May 19, 2008 11:19 AM

I'm looking for great examples of local/city networking and information sites that really offer something useful/fun to both visitors AND residents of a community. Sites that people enjoy using as a regular resource to enjoy and really embrace a specific place and what makes it tick. Do you know of any really kickass city websites that have rocked your world?

Or what about sites that try really hard but don't quite work... what do you like/not like about them? What are they hitting or missing for you?

I'm imagining stuff that's maybe a cross between creative loafing (with events, etc.), gridskipper (cool map tours), with a kinda snarky vibe and active community forums & stuff a la television without pity.

If any of that makes sense.

And if you DON'T have a cool community site to suggest, what would you really love to see in one that would MAKE it totally rock your world? What would hook you into checking a city's site regularly? What would turn you off and lose your interest?

posted by miss lynnster to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Clearly I worded this question in a really sucky way that made it hard to answer or something... damn. Because I KNOW there have to be some good city sites out there in this big happening world.
posted by miss lynnster at 1:38 PM on May 19, 2008

This is tricky, but I'll give it a shot:

When I lived in SF, I used a combination of Yelp, Upcoming, and a couple mailing lists like Laughing Squid and Flavorpill to keep me informed. Yelp was a really great resource for finding restaurants, my co-workers and I usually spent some time on there deciding where to go for lunch daily. Upcoming was more hit or miss, there's a lot of nerd stuff on there and depending on your music tastes there will be a lot of shows you want to see or practically none. I liked the way the Flavorpill HTML emails are designed and the content is usually pretty interesting to me, Laughing Squid had more noise than signal to me but still some good things came out of it.

When I lived in Prague, the only two options for expats were expats.cz and prague.tv, both owned by the same person. They were like a crappy version of craigslist combined with some useful information, like movie times in English. Their message forums were run-of-the-mill software but people still used them because there was nothing else to turn to.

I feel like what you're describing was what Daily Jolt was trying to be for college students but never actually worked itself into. I think Yelp is somewhat closer, somehow they managed to turn aggressive blanket marketing into a community site that people actually use and enjoy, to the point where the users do most of the word-of-mouth advertising now.
posted by bertrandom at 2:05 PM on May 19, 2008

The Brisneyland Livejournal Community has been really good with organizing a whole lot of things.
posted by divabat at 3:59 PM on May 19, 2008

Davis Wiki is one of the things I'll miss the most when I move away. I use it several times a week, mostly to find info and reviews of local businesses. The local events page is helpful as well, if only for figuring out which days I should avoid driving through downtown Davis.

The people who run Davis Wiki have started the Wiki Spot project, and it looks like a lot of community wikis have sprung up. I'm not sure how many of them have enough content to be useful, but I really like the idea.
posted by kiripin at 9:04 PM on May 19, 2008

Those are great! I would love to see more...
posted by miss lynnster at 9:46 PM on May 19, 2008