Neighbors Go || A College Student’s Analysis & Suggestions
I’ve never visited NeighborsGo.com before it was discussed in this course that we were to have a guest speaker affiliated with the web site speaking to our class.
As a first time visitor, the approach behind Neighbors Go intrigued me. People submit stories and events online and they’re published in a weekly, print insert of the Dallas Morning News… an interesting concept, to say the least.
But, I did have to dig a little deep to find out just what that concept was. I’d suggest that Neighbors Go put some sort of graphic or dedicate a small, but visible, section of their front-page to an explanation for newcomers like myself of what exactly it is they’re doing. After all, it is a unique concept– I think it deserves to be the center of attention the instant someone stumbles upon their web site.
My initial impressions hinted to a promising exploration of interesting content relative to the DFW area. I found their unconventional website design intriguing and bold, as well. Perhaps I had found a new, untapped resource for finding things to do around this very spread-out, and often times uneventful, metroplex, I thought.
Personally, that is what I focus on with websites like these: events. I’m always wondering what is going on in DFW because, frankly, there isn’t ever much of anything happening around here. From my own experience, most people in my age-range and demographic (18-24 year-old college students) seem to agree with that statement, complaining more often than not about the boredom that is sure to ensue every weekend in this area.
Neighbors Go asks its visitors to make three selections upon initial arrival to the site: 1. Pick a community, 2. Pick an interest and 3. Show me. As the masthead graphic above depicts, the communities are native to the DFW metroplex and its neighboring cities, interests include anything from “Arts/Entertainment” to “Senior Spotlight,” and the final “show me” choice, or content selection, displays elements such as events, blogs, and photos.
I decided first to explore where I live: McKinney, Texas. I view McKinney, as well as the immediately adjacent cities of Frisco, Plano, Allen, etc., to be commonplace suburbia. Most residents are young families and upper middle-class workers.
I realize my personal opinions on these cities aren’t exactly considered a scholarly source, though. So, I decided to use AC Nielsen’s PRIZM, a database that offers “precise insights using lifestyle and consumer behavior segmentation,” to provide a more legitimate comparison. My findings using the PRIZM database are as follows:
PRIZM found generally the same results as my personal opinion. The most common demographic group throughout this area is “Kids & Cul-de-sacs.” AC Nielsen describes this group as:
Upper-middle class, suburban, married couples with children–that’s the skinny on Kids & Cul-de-Sacs, an enviable lifestyle of large families in recently built subdivisions. With a high rate of Hispanic and Asian Americans, this segment is a refuge for college-educated, white-collar professionals with administrative jobs and upper-middle-class incomes. Their nexus of education, affluence, and children translates into large outlays for child-centered products and services.
The median household income for this groups is $74,448 and they’re most likely to “shop at the Disney store, buy educational toys, read parenting, watch Toon Disney (and drive a) Chrysler Town & Country.”
Right. The purpose of all that was to further illustrate my point that the McKinney, Texas area is just about as unappealing and uneventful as it gets for the 18-24 year-old college student.
So, what does Neighbors Go have to offer to save me from myself? Let’s take a look.
An “Allen Retired Educators Association” meeting, a seminar on how to keep my lungs healthy and a slew of donation events. I’m not entirely sure this website has provided the content that I was hoping it could.
Although, I’ll admit the “One Spirit, Many Flavors” event could make for a good date, especially considering it’s free (back to that college student demographic
). I’ll have to find a date first for that one, though.
Okay, well what about Denton, Texas? The University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University are in Denton. There’s tons of college students in Denton. PRIZM even says that the city’s most popular demographic segments include the “Young and Rustic” and “Up-and-Comers” crowds.
Fast-paced lifestyles centered on sports, cars, and dating … mobile twentysomethings includ(ing) a disproportionate number of recent college graduates who are into athletic activities, the latest technology, and nightlife entertainment.
And I’m always finding things to do in Denton. Local bands playing parties at DIY music venues like The Barn, concerts at Rubber Gloves, events like Denton Peace Festival. Surely Neighbors Go has to have some stuff for me that I’d like to do in this college town but am not aware of.
And the verdict is…
Three events? And none of them are even in Denton?! The first’s in Lewisville, the second’s in Flower Mound and the third’s in Dallas.
I’m not sure what to think about all this.
It seems to me like Neighbors Go needs to dig a little deeper and find more relative events for the web site itself or use more aggressive advertising techniques to let community members know that this resource is available. They aren’t appearing to provide enough content, and after this discovery, I’m personally discouraged from coming back to their site. There has to be much more going on around DFW that isn’t being picked up on, and the college-student demographic in this area is certainly asking for it.
I seemed to find discrepancies between the print and online versions, as well, of McKinney’s Neighbors Go content. As seen below, the print version from last week catalogs events up to this Saturday and editors have chosen to display a chess tournament for Saturday, November 13th.
The online calendar, however, has no mention of this chess tournament. It only shows the “Plano’s Got Talent” event for the 13th.
I also can’t help but wonder who decides what events go into print and which ones stay on the website? I think that Neighbors Go would benefit a lot more from having a concise calendar in their print edition with multiple events per day instead of only one.
To me, a talent competition fundraiser, complete with a $1,000 prize, seems like it would appeal more to the “Kids & Cul-de-sacs” young parents demographic of McKinney, Texas than a chess tournament. Readers of the print edition would never know of this event, though, without going online. And on the flip side, online readers potentially interested in that chess tournament would be left in the dust, as well.
In lieu of Neighbors Go’s concept of letting regular-Joes write articles and see them in print, I only saw two articles in the McKinney print-edition that were attributed to a “contributor.” The majority of stories were by staff writers and editors.
Overall, community writers aren’t seeing enough recognition for their work, editors are obviously putting events in the publication that community members never shared online to begin with, and the entire publication just overall seems like one big advertisement. Ads are everywhere, taking up a majority of each page’s content.
I think the concept behind Neighbors Go is interesting enough but is in desperate need of some refinement. It appears that their goals conflict heavily with their finished product, something that shouldn’t ever occur within a business.
Online Journalism 2340 
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