Proximity Social Networks - The potential to tap
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A year ago, I came to know a service called "LifeAt" (http://www.lifeat.com) which connects neighborhoods through a website. Connecting the neighborhoods, residential apartments, office buildings through intranets/social networking websites is a concept (termed as "nethoods"), which seems to be here for around seven years. But in spite of being an old concept, I am not sure why these "nethoods" have not gained much momentum.

We are now in the era of social networking. Facebook and Twitter have become a part of our daily life. But apart from being in touch and sharing with friends, what are the other ways in which the users of the social networking services are benefited? I don't have much clarity on this. Proximity Social Networking seems to be one sure way by which the people at proximity can get benefited in many ways.

How?

1. People at the large office buildings, apartments can publish their advertisements in the website. e.g. Used cars, Used books, Exchange of goods, Rentals etc.
2. Like minded people can form volunteer groups for general, social causes.
3. Group of people can join together and negotiate with vendors for seasonal, festival purchases.
4. The group can organize events, contests, polls.
5. People can endorse each other for identification and security purpose etc.

I am sure, apart from the above mentioned examples, there are many more ways we can get advantage out of closed groups.

If Facebook kind of services can provide hierarchical locations (Country > State > City > Area > Street > Building), it will be very useful for the users to create proximity groups and use them.

Just to try this concept, I have created a closed group at facebook for TIDEL Park employees -
Facebook User Group for Chennai TIDEL Park: Chennai-TIDEL

Just a brief search on the net for open source software to create our own social networks yielded so much results. Many of these apps provide almost all standard features of social networking software. But I was looking for social software with classifieds and ecommerce features. ResidentHQ (http://www.residentshq.com/ - not FOSS) seems to have most of these features.

I am yet to explore the features (also constraints) available in Facebook for the closed/open user groups. I will update the developments through another blogpost later.

Take care...