1. What's Olocal?

What is Olocal?

Olocal, is a web platform consisting of a website and apps for Android and iPhone/iPad. The apps will contain pretty much all of the functionality of the website so you can use whichever is more convenient.

Olocal, short for Online Local, is based on a core idea — bringing together different popular and useful web technologies on one platform to serve you and your local community with unprecedented access to the people and resources there.

Normally, you would use separate apps and websites to perform different functions – get your news, chat, share pics, read and post opinions, set up meetings, video chat, find events, read or post to a blog, collaborate with others, etc. Olocal combines these in one place, all around your local community.

dedicated to security

Olocal is committed to your security, both in terms of your privacy and your safety.

• Our video and text chats are fully encrypted.
• New members need to confirm both their email and their phone numbers to sign up.
• There are little red flags to click on by almost all content for quick reporting of an issue.
• We allow you complete control over what information you share with whom.
• We do not ever share your information with anyone other than what is available to visitors, Olocal members, friends and those you share a group or Circle with.

Dedicated to your local Community

Olocal is a response to the effect the Web, media and social media have had moving people’s attention and presence away from their local community. Most contact with our local community is very limited for most of us. People are more and more dependent on the Web for their information, interaction, products and services, and entertainment.

Here’s the problem. Media companies and individuals are mostly financed based on how well they can get and keep your attention for their advertisers, and how much information about you they can extract for their own use and and to sell to others. You are not their customer, your attention and your information are their product.

And the Web has created massive competition for your attention and information – we’ve gone from a few TV channels to hundreds of channels and billions of websites. Because of that competition, too often the media and social media gets and keeps our attention through fear, mistrust, divisiveness and appealing to our worse natures. We are given a picture of the world that is very dark.

The end result, not surprisingly, is that most people are more fearful and mistrustful. But for the most part, the community around you is safe and filled with good people. Statistically, we are safer now than at any other point in history. It’s just that you’re continually fed information that says the opposite.

Olocal is dedicated to supporting local community by connecting people to people, to resources, to relevant information, and to the useful products and services offered by local creators, businesses and organizations.

We also want to support and facilitate a move toward more civility, inclusiveness, respect, and kindness between each of us. And to help empower people to create a better community for themselves and their neighbors. Having a strong, vibrant and kind local community will make life feel better.

How it Works

Olocal has three facets – Listings, Circles and Portals.

• Listings include directories of information and articles including:
  • A real world and virtual events calendar
  • A blogging site
  • A real world/virtual places directory
  • Classifieds and job listings
  • A list of retail, business to business and non-profit service providers.
    And all listings include the ability to rate, comment, and “favorite” so you have them saved for easy access.
• Circles includes text and audio/video one-on-one and group chat/conferencing, polls and real-time collaboration tools
  Functions include:
  • Real-time encrypted text chat including multiple topics (threads), image management, delete any of your messages and quote message.
  • Video chat (encrypted) can support 50 or more participants.
  • Broadcast video chat over YouTube.
  • Allow anyone to join (if it’s public) or add people or groups manually.
  • Set a Circle to be public or private (hidden from public view), read-only (only admins can post, for example if you’re doing an interview), allow any member to post, or anyone can post messages.
  • Miniblogging – halfway between blogging and microblogging (like Twitter). Post a quick note by itself, or have it lead to a more in-depth description and open it up for a discussion.
  • Creator is a super admin for the Circle and can set any member as an admin.
  • Admins can edit Circle settings, delete any messages, start a video conference (if the Circle is set to only allow admins to start a conference).
  • In a video conference, admins can moderate the group, create breakout rooms and move people between them.
• Portals are personal websites within Olocal for individuals and groups. It is also where you manage your account, your friends and groups, and listings.
  The personal portal includes these functions:
  • Create and manage your own listings which can be private (only in your portal) or public on the main site, and posted to one of your groups if you’d like.
  • Lists of your friends and groups, as well as invitations for friendship.
  • A scheduler/calendar — for your own schedule and to share events with others, as well as to arrange meetings/events with others and invite people to meetings/events.
  • A comments/reviews system for all listings.
  • Your favorites for saving listings.

Along with all these are classic social media functions including:

• • A wall for displaying your own and your friends and groups activities and comments.
  • Show your listings.
  • Show your friends and groups.
  • Galleries for displaying and making available images, documents, videos and audio/podcasts.

Group portals include a subset of these functions plus group functions.

We’re going to be refining and tying all of these together as we see how you use them and we get feedback. And we’ll be adding more functions over time — we’ll soon have an online creators marketplace and event ticket sales. Plus, we’re very interested in your ideas.

By including all these functions together, all for your local community, it allows you to do things that normally would be difficult or impossible.

What does it cost?

Olocal uses what’s known as the freemium model, where most people won’t need to pay for the services we offer, and we will offer paid services over time. We will take a small percentage of Marketplace and ticket sales, offer premium business accounts with enhanced features, and offer things like additional account storage space.

For Example

Here’s an example of what we’re working toward:

While perusing the latest events in your chosen categories on your phone, you notice a gallery opening in your town. You tap to open it, read all about it, check out the image gallery, and then submit a reservation and then you tap the button to add it to your calendar.

After that, you click the link in one of the images to visit the artist’s gallery in their portal, and you notice they have a chat button. You tap it to ask a few questions, and once you post you see they come online to respond and you get into a conversation. At one point, they ask if they can show you something so you start a video chat. As your chat winds down, they offer to friend you and mention that they’re going to be doing a virtual tour of their studio that night, so you tap to add yourself to their calendar and add invites to several of your friends.

That night you get a reminder on your phone with a link to the virtual studio tour which ends up being a group chat about the arts, and you all decide to create a Circles group so that you can continue the conversation over time and bring in more people.

After that, you tap on the artist’s store button, peruse their offerings, and end up purchasing a print. You’re so excited that you end up posting a review on the gallery event and adding the artist’s real world gallery in the Providers section to your favorites.

Some of this you can do right now, some is coming soon but you get the idea. Now imagine, could you do that now without Olocal? How much work would it take, visiting multiple sites/apps, sending IM’s with links, etc?