On Monday, Kevin Freitas came to my Internet class and talked about feedtacoma.com. What is it you ask? Well a farely simple news feed from Tacoma's bloggers, personal and built up websites that relate to Tacoma. The overall purpose? Develop community and bring people together which casts a positive light on Tacoma's community. Unlike exit133.com, there are no ads, moderators or financial profit.
Who keeps comments moderated? Kevin told us that since Tacoma has a relatively small town feel, the fear of becoming known in public keeps people from flaming. The site is also self moderated by the site's users.
How come there are no ads and business profit? Well you have to a brain scan on Mr.Freitas to answer that question. No, I think it's because community is the most important thing. The creator didn't need site profit and the site is like a "Utopia". Just like a park, there are no billboards, commercial greed or signs of advertising. feedtacoma.com is a place for people to mingle, gossip, stay updated with the community happenings and than connect in the real world.
While Kevin says, this site acts as an equalizer for citizens. I would like to argue that point. While this is a public feed, it's condensed to bloggers, commenters, Tacoma business etc. People who are avid Internet users. Which you could say is just about everyone nowadays. Except for the poor that actually live in the city who don't own laptops. I see feed Tacoma's contributers as urban professionals educated or middle class. Deep within the heart of the city, Tacoma has many poor citizens that are excluded from this virtual community.
However the positive aspect of this is that when virtual community seeps into the physical community, everyone benefits. I was impressed with the chalk off Friday community that began from feed Tacoma. Anyone can join in on that and it happened in downtown Tacoma, not on a particular website.
This is all of course through my critical lense that I am seeing this, but it's defiantly something worth talking about.
Who keeps comments moderated? Kevin told us that since Tacoma has a relatively small town feel, the fear of becoming known in public keeps people from flaming. The site is also self moderated by the site's users.
How come there are no ads and business profit? Well you have to a brain scan on Mr.Freitas to answer that question. No, I think it's because community is the most important thing. The creator didn't need site profit and the site is like a "Utopia". Just like a park, there are no billboards, commercial greed or signs of advertising. feedtacoma.com is a place for people to mingle, gossip, stay updated with the community happenings and than connect in the real world.
While Kevin says, this site acts as an equalizer for citizens. I would like to argue that point. While this is a public feed, it's condensed to bloggers, commenters, Tacoma business etc. People who are avid Internet users. Which you could say is just about everyone nowadays. Except for the poor that actually live in the city who don't own laptops. I see feed Tacoma's contributers as urban professionals educated or middle class. Deep within the heart of the city, Tacoma has many poor citizens that are excluded from this virtual community.
However the positive aspect of this is that when virtual community seeps into the physical community, everyone benefits. I was impressed with the chalk off Friday community that began from feed Tacoma. Anyone can join in on that and it happened in downtown Tacoma, not on a particular website.
This is all of course through my critical lense that I am seeing this, but it's defiantly something worth talking about.
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