Re: Cohousing App | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Tiffany Lee Brown (magdalen23gmail.com) | |
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2016 21:39:41 -0700 (PDT) |
If anyone does end up trying to run with an app --- keep in mind that many of the app's potential users might be what marketers would term "aspirational" and/or "lifestyle" customers. These are folks interested in what cohousing represents, regardless of whether they ever end up "buying" the ostensible product (e.g., joining up with others and buying land/home). People like... Oh, me for example. The app could have tasteful, well selected advertising opportunities, and/or a low priced classifieds section. Ann was interested in research: I'd predict that market research on people interested in co-housing and other ways of living in community would show a small but growing demographic/ psychographic group that tends to skew middle class to affluent, college educated, with more Influencers and "Bohemian mix" members than most population segments. For many, a marketer's dream target. This target can be difficult to reach because they/we tend to be independently minded and media savvy. For the purposes of creating a useful housing/community app, it does not matter whether every user ends up becoming a co-houser. What matters is that they buy and use the app. One could create an app with a larger appeal -- say it's part roommate-finder-Tinder-style, part earnest-community-builder, part real estate/rental service focused Angie's List -ish app (filtered, so for example a predatory rental management company would get bad ratings and perhaps be prevented from posting). You'd get many users just there for chatting and finding a good group house after college. Perhaps it would be of interest to housemate matching companies, rental brokers, and any developers who are up for trying new, ambitious models for community living (such as the Millennial-focused "dorm" spaces discussed in the New Yorker article I linked to a few emails ago). Ideally, those folks who make money with the app could subsidize those who use the app strictly for co-housing and community efforts. This is pretty much how Craigslist operates: a company more focused on providing a service than making money, still brings in a lot of revenue in a small number of its online service silos, which enable Craigslist to provide many other services free (and support the nonprofit efforts of the Craigslist Foundation). Again, I'm just trying to throw out ideas that might be useful, not trying to sell anyone a bridge or prepare their business plan. :-) I hope I wasn't overly harsh in an earlier post, when I expressed that a sense of demanding-ness or negativity in these conversations made me want to withdraw instead of contributing more ideas. Thanks to those of you who emailed me with encouragement after that. I appreciate it. All my best, Tiffany Sent from the far shores of a distant land > On Jun 19, 2016, at 2:22 PM, Crystal Farmer <crystalbyrdfarmer [at] > gmail.com> wrote: > > > As a Millenial, I'd love to see a cohousing app. It's hard to find > cohousing if there's not already a community nearby. There are mailing > lists and Facebook groups. Charlotte Cohousing has a Meetup group with over > 300 members. We don't even have land yet! So many people passively > interested in cohousing. What if there was a way for them to connect and > start talking? With exposure from the experts on what they need to do to > get started? With a huge list of names to show to developers and investors? > I don't know about the real estate market, but surely people see dollar > signs when they have access to hundreds of people who are willing to buy > something. > > This mailing list has been the best resource so far, but it's the only > listserv I use! There's something to be said for slick apps. I'd willing to > help with the effort though I am not a software developer. > > Crystal > Charlotte Cohousing Community > _________________________________________________________________ > Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at: > http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/ > >
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Re: Cohousing App Crystal Farmer, June 19 2016
- Re: Cohousing App Corey, June 19 2016
- Re: Cohousing App Tiffany Lee Brown, June 19 2016
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