New Raphel Report

There's No Place Like Home!

             Imagine picking up the phone to dial the local flower shop and having to pull out a phone book which listed all the phone numbers of all the businesses and residences in the United States. This phone book would take up most of your living room and you'd probably need the strength of Hercules just to turn the pages.

            Now keep that image in mind and wander over to your computer. You don't have to be a weightlifter to open up your computer, but you also might not have much success in learning much about your local flower shop. Sure, you might be able to find a phone number at a search site, but the local flower stores that have the money and the energy to put together an attractive and informative website are few and far between.

            Let's think about the phone book again. The phone companies have divided the country into small areas, sometimes one city or town, sometimes several smaller towns, and distribute local phone directories for each of these smaller units.

            Why couldn't the Internet be more like the phone book or the local newspaper? Wouldn't it be nice if there were a local web where you could find out everything that's happening in town, share some gossip, find out what's playing in the movies, order some shoes or flowers, read the local news, etc . . .

            Seems like what we need is a local Internet.

           I've been thinking about the benefits of being local a lot lately. We're working on a website for St. Johnsbury, Vermont. A group that represents local businesses has hired us to create a portal site for St. Johnsbury, a gathering place for locals and visitors to find out more about St. Johnsbury and share opinions, information, and even recipes. There is a lot of local interest in the site and advertisers are lining up to be part of this project.

           So I've been thinking. (Always a dangerous occupation). Why couldn't we have developers, sort of like real estate developers, start building sites like the St. Johnsbury site all around Vermont? (I picked Vermont because I live here. This idea should work in any state.) Tourism is one of the top three industries in Vermont, with over 13.4 million trips to Vermont for leisure, business, or personal travel in 2005, and total expenditures for goods and services of 1.57 billion, according to a Vermont Department of Tourism study.

            What we need is something like Franklin Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps to build websites! Once all these local websites are completed, they could be linked together for tourism purposes, to have information and shopping for real and virtual visitors to states across the country.

            The idea of a local Internet is not new or unique. Thousands of sites attempting to offer local information have already sprung up across the country. Many of these are barely disguised advertising vehicles, with minimum content and maximum ad space. They do little for locals or visitors. Other sites like Craig's List provide a valuable local service by functioning as a vibrant classified ads and information page. But they do not have the breadth of the site I'm imagining.

            Many organizations like Chambers of Commerce have put up sites for their members and the general public. These sites tend to have more information and are loaded with business information and directories. They often have an events calendar which gives some indication of what's going on. However, these sites often lack a real feel for the people who live in the community: their problems, their needs, and their interest in sharing information with others in the community. Sites like these need at least some of the following:

            Some sound and videos would make the site more exciting.

            What are your thoughts on the idea of a "local" Internet?