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July 31, 2013

Commune App: Here Comes The Neighborhood

By Nicole Spector, Contributing Writer

A hot new app has hit the big apple: Commune. The app touts the cozy tagline "a digital bulletin board to initiate the neighborhood and changes you want to see." 

New York City is the perfect place to roll out such a feature in its beta phase. The NYC boroughs are brimming with pride, and what's more, just about every resident has an opinion they're more than happy, if not obnoxiously desperate, to share with fellow residents.  





Image via Shutterstock

Unveiled for the iPhone (News - Alert), the Next Web reports,Commune is targeting neighborhoods in Manhattan including Greenwich Village, Morningside Heights and Chelsea -- so, not exactly hitting the slums yet, it is fair to say (not that NYC has many ghettos to tout). But what sticks out as odd about the launch is that Brooklyn is conspicuously left out of the mix. What about all the Park Slope moms who want to create and promote stroller-yoga activities? And the Williamsburg hipsters who would like to organize mustache pub crawls? So many stereotypes missing out on new ways to keep it in the gentrified hood!

A reviewer at the Next Web compliments Commune's "forward-looking flat design"(possibly the vaguest compliment ever dished out for an app), and has a similar criticism, noting that there were no events listed in areas Commune isn't targeting. Greenwich Village has plenty of action, while, say, Gowanus, has squat. This is problematic because Greenwich Village is already a circus of happenings. One can hardly navigate her way down Bleecker Street without getting devoured by some Time-Out listed event or sucked into a Village Voice pothole of highly publicized excitement.

It's almost certain that if Commune does well, it will penetrated into the deeper, less-tourist-touched areas of New York that could really benefit from an app designed to organize groups and get information out. But will it do well? Had it rolled out it in these more community-based areas, where demand is already so high, it likely would have been guaranteed to succeed. 




Edited by Rich Steeves
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