fragment

I received a tweet last night asking for my thoughts on a new apartment social platform called 5Neighbors and I found myself wondering. Don’t get me wrong, I love people who go for it. People who put their heads down, design, build and deliver. And, who have the wherewithal to put it out there by asking for feedback. The people who just do it, care what others think and use it (good and bad) as motivation for making their offering even better. Those people – rock. I applaud the 5Neighbors team in that respect.

Their platform is clean, it’s well designed, it’s inviting and it’s user-friendly. And, for all intents and purposes, it’s fairly priced with zero contractual obligations. But, I wonder…

Why?

My chief question is – why? As a group – we have gone to war with each other over who is going to get the top spots on page one of Google. And, trust me, it is an all out, take no prisoners, war. It’s the middle man competing with 30 other want-to-be middle men vs. the little guy who now has an equal footing. It’s war. And, where has it taken us?

Prize? 

It’s lent to a ton of confusion for the end-user. Fragmentation – at it’s best. The people who want to do business with us can’t even tell us where they heard about us half the time. And, the other half that can remember mis-quote their source.

In my head, the further we fragment this audience the less likely they are to participate. Even in the niches like 5Neighbors. Why? Because they are – capital f – letters in between ending with that ing suffix – tired. They are just tired. 

You see it with less conversation on Twitter. I recall a day when ten or so multifamily rockers talked every single waking hour of every single day – it was crazy cool. I can’t tell you the last time I participated in that way. I recall a day when the same thing happened on FB, MF Insiders and other platforms. Today – not as much. I remember commenting on ten to fifteen blog posts every week. And, responding to just as many comments on my own blog. Today – not as much. People are distracted by too many channels and too much noise. And, I don’t think fragmenting the audience into a less noisy channel is the answer. Maybe to a select few but not to the masses. Not in a way that will be meaningful to the user. But hey, that is just this guys opinion.

I’ll Stop Now

5Neighbors – I do applaud you. I really do. And, I wish you the best of the best kind of luck. You’ve built a cool thing on a cool premise. Do keep us posted as we love to be wrong about things and will gladly do a future article on your successes.

I am curious what others think – if you have a quick second in between your fragmentation efforts – give us some feedback.

Your – wondering why I’m feeling further fragmented – multifamily maniac,

M