Burnsville Unveils New, Localized Social Networking Site

Watch out Mark Zuckerberg. The City of Burnsville is now host to a social networking site that is only open to people living within Burnsville city limits: burnsville.ourcommonplace.com. However, unlike Facebook or Twitter, the goal isn't keeping users absorbed in a virtual world, but gently redirecting them to real life.

“Many times, people spend more time on the Internet talking with people across the globe, sharing cat videos rather than spending time with their neighbors right next door,” said Nick Nevins, a community-organizing fellow with the Harvard-based project. “What commonplace is designed to do is not to take you into the Internet but get you off of the computer and back into the community.”

Commonplace looks like a hybrid between Facebook, Twitter and Meetup.com, with a dash of Patch. It incorporates key features of all: User profiles, the ability to post or send private messages, the ability to subscribe to “feeds” and an emphasis on bringing together people with shared interests like knitting or fantasy football. Like Patch, the site sends out a newsletter of recent postings each day, but administrators don't create original, local news content. 

Global sites such as Facebook usually connect users to people they already know. Commonplace has a smaller scope—just your immediate geographical area—and a different purpose.

Consider the predicament of a brand-new Burnsvillite. Say he needs to borrow a ladder. All of his facebook friends are elsewhere, so it wouldn’t make sense to post the request there. He could walk over and ask a next-door neighbor, but that could be intimidating. Instead, he can post it on Commonplace, which saves him the effort of making a cold-call on their neighbor but does help him meet new people in town. Or so the team argues.

“It adds sense of connection to the community people don’t have with Facebook or Twitter,” said Julia Campbell, another member of the team. “If you want to start a book club or a playgroup, you’re not going to send out a Facebook message.”

In this way, Commonplace is meant to be an “online civic engagement tool.” Campbell said the collaboration between Commonplace and the City of Burnsville began last fall, after members of the team met Mayor Elizabeth Kautz at an event for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

A delegation from Commonplace will be here for the next 10 weeks to promote the site. At the moment, the number of users on the site is small. Many are city officials. Campbell said the goal is enroll 20 percent of the population.

“All of (the other Commonplace sites) have met or exceeded that goal and they’re continuing to grow,” Campbell said.

So far, the site has been hosted by seven cities across the U.S. including, nearby Golden Valley.

The service is free for both users and the host, the City of Burnsville. At present, the team isn't interested in discussing whether Commonplace can turn a profit, though that could be an option down the line.

“We’re not really focused on that right now,” Campbell said. “It’s truly civic engagement tool. We are huge into community."