CommonPlace is an online community forum that allows neighbors to post to a central website to share announcements, organize local events, form community groups, and generally stay connected.
CommonPlace was formed in April 2011 out of Washington D.C. and Harvard University with the goal of giving people an online space to connect with others in their community to share resources, form member groups, and create more civic minded and connected communities in general. The idea was to create a tool that would revitalize community interaction. CommonPlace differentiates itself from other social networking sites in that it is community-based and requires new users to enter a valid local address before they are able to join a given network. Each town’s site is split into neighborhoods of roughly 700 people each. The technology was designed to provide a centralized, user-friendly platform for sharing community announcements, public notices, event information, and other local news on a single feed. The site acts much like an online bulletin board and after registering, individuals can create a profile, post announcements to their neighborhood site or the greater town/city site, view events, find contacts, send private messages and subscribe to community feeds on a specific topic. Newly posted information can also be sent periodically via email. Any individual or community interested in using CommonPlace should contact Organizing [at] commonplaceusa [dot] com. CommonPlace provides the platform, a staff person on the ground to help organize around the platform, follow-up customer service, and lifetime feature updates.
General website browsing skills are needed for the end users. CommonPlace provides the initial platform set-up and ongoing service.
Once CommonPlace is established in a community, it is free to the end user. However, information on the up-front cost of the platform and associated services is not made public.
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