New Site Arrives, Connects Places to People

Localist.com entry point

Nate Mook and Mykel Nahorniak (Left and Right respectively), at the launch party in Nate's Baltimore apartment.

Last weekend I made an exhaustive trip to the Washington, DC area with a couple of early adulthood friends of mine. We did the normal tourist thing, you know, see the Smithsonian museums, talk about the things that changed since our last visit and drank a lot.

While there I visited one of my best friends, Mykel Nahorniak. It just so happens that Myke was also holding the launch party for a website he'd just finished developing called Localist.com. The launch party was held at a mutual friend's (Nate Mook, the co-founder of Localist.com and founder of BetaNews and Power Archiver), posh Baltimore warehouse apartment.

The party was successful and a number of people were in attendance. There was even a live performance by hustlePUNCH late into the party. Both Nate and Myke stood by to greet the invite only guests and later Nate gave a brief demo of the site and ran through a few 'what if' scenarios while Myke talked to a couple of people about the concepts involved in what made Localist.com an asset and commodity to internet users on a local and global level.

I've had my eye on the site for a while and asked a few surface questions here and there while it was being developed, but since the site had just been launched and I was in town, I figured I might as well go ahead and try and get more in-depth.

The following is an interview I got to do with Myke before my visit:

SG: How did localist.com come about? Like, what inspired the idea to build this site?

MN: My business partner [Nate Mook] and I were in LA for a conference. We were staying at a hotel in Burbank and wanted to check out the Hollywood night-life. Nate had been to one of the downtown clubs previously and said it was pretty fun, so we decided to check it out. Once inside, after paying the $20 cover, we were shocked to realize only two people were in the place. It was hard to justify leaving after forking over 20 bucks just to get in. Needless to say, the night wasn't very enjoyable. Discussing it later, we thought, wouldn't it be cool if there was a website that told people where the cool spots were, based on where everyone says they're going? So, we built one.

SG: At first glance, there are many features that Localist implements that are similar to other social networking sites like MySapce and Facebook, but when a user visits and begins to use the site, what feature sets does Localist have that are unique to the site?

MN: We're trying to steer away from the "meet people through this site" kind of social networking. We've designed Localist to be a useful tool for you and people you actually know. We ask for a bit of additional information just to give people an idea of what kinds of people go to what places.

SG: One of my favorite features of Localist is the ability to rate a local place I've been and to see the varying experiences of others who have visited the same place. For example, you gave "Liam's Pint-Size Pub" a 'thumbs down', which even though I do not live in Baltimore I can see and gauge this place as somewhere I may not want to visit when I go back up to visit friends and family. However, there are other users who have said they enjoyed their visit and I can read what they've said in contrast to what you have said. Some users my like the food but not the atmosphere, where as other may like the atmosphere but not the service. It affords me the opportunity to see a wide array of opinions and pit them against my personal likes and dislikes without having to spend time or money as I would have previously had to do. Would you say that Localist, even though designed for the local community would be beneficial to a tourist who was aware of the site? What other things would a tourist find useful on Localist.com?

MN: In a way Localist is almost more beneficial to tourists, because it allows them to get great real-time information about the city's venues without having to know anything about them.

SG: I also find the "find similar places" to be an excellent feature, but let me ask, how the 'similar places' list is derived? I noticed that "bars" and "nightclubs" are listed together, but in my experiences the two are not always synonymous, such as a bar can have a dance floor but it is not a night club and a nightclub usually has a bar but the ambiance is vastly different from somewhere like Hooters, where there is a bar with football or basketball on the various television screens around the establishment.

MN: The Similar Places list looks at specific flags in the venue the person is looking at, and then checks those off on the Browse page. So, if you're looking at an after-hours night club that has a typical crowd of baby boomers, clicking "Find Similar Places" will pull up other venues with those specifications.

SG: Localist seems like a wonderful marketing opportunity for local area businesses and events; do you guys get regular inquiries about listing such events and establishments on Localist?

MN: We just launched this past weekend, so we're currently working on communicating with local businesses to let them know what we can do for them. Businesses and performers have profiles just like any other user, so they have many options to communicate with their fans and patrons.

SG: I'd like to thank your both your time and the opportunity to ask you these questions, Myke. I know you're a busy man with many things going on in the background of your life. I wish you well in your endeavors and hope to see more come of Localist. Will you keep me updated as to the progress of Localist?

MN: We'll be adding new features all the time. A tumblelog may be started to highlight them. Thanks for the questions, Shawn!

SG: Sure thing Myke, I'll talk to you later, man.

In the end the best way to sum up what Localist is, would be to take the various parts of what was done right or the good, but unpolished ideas of various other 'social' style sites such as Vox, Tumblr, Twitter, and MySpace and add a unique unifying attribute to them – physicality. The site isn't all about virtual anything, but actual everything. There is no e-hug, or super wall that friends across the country can write some silly inside joke, but there is are elements that someone across the street can look up and physically go and see or do real things with or without other people. The 'social' aspect of the site is more of a feature than it is a function and the tangibility of what you see on the screen goes beyond a high angle, hyper dramatic camera phone snapshot with Photoshop filtered avatars, streaming pop music, dancing glitter text, elongated friend-buddy-pal lists and Google Ads.

In the words of Myke himself on his tublelog, he sums the site up with:

We have a database of all the venues in the city and all the events that are happening at them. People create profiles and say they're going to a venue or event. In real time, you can see what types of people are going where. It's sort of like a heat map for the city's social life.

Unfortunately I didn't get to actually use Localist just before my visit to my native DC area since my journey was up in the air until the last minute, but in hindsight I feel I would have had a better overall experience and a lot less guess work if I had used it.

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