Building Community
Strengthening the Local Economy
Lokkal is local internet: social network, search engine, calendar of events... Lokkal is the digital town square, like the Yellow Pages robustly reborn for the 21st century.
Lokkal is a new kind of website, a new kind of internet, internet as a public service. Like public television is different than commercial television, Lokkal is different than commercial internet.
Lokkal returns its profits to the community.
Better community and a stronger local economy are the answer to many of our most pressing social problems.
The solution must be online, because that's where people's attention is, and it must be grassroots, local, because lasting solutions come from the bottom up, not from the top down.
Lokkal organizes the community. It is a platform for practical social activism. If you want to make the world a better place, organize your neighborhood. El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido / The people (or the town) united will never be defeated.
Organizing locally, promoting local character, is the antidote to the flattening effects of globalism.
Globally-oriented search engines and social networks do not work well locally. Lokkal's strength is local curation.
Thank you Google technicians, but we don't need your algorithm. We will present our own community to the planet.
A meta-platform, Lokkal allows everyone local to publish and be found: everything local to everyone interested; all things to all people... local.
Community moderation encourages civility. Lokkal is humanly curated internet. Lokkal puts crowd-sourcing to work. Juntos podemos / Together we can.
Free of commercial pressures, operated as a public utility, Lokkal does not have to engage and addict users to maximize shareholder profits.
A lot of young people are online playing games, or passing time on social networks. A lot of people of all ages just want to be online. Lokkal gives them a healthier, more edifying online experience. Lokkal is a tool, not a game.
Lokkal is the Buy Local movement online, applied to technology: local internet, of, by and for the community.
Like microfinance brings money to the little guy, Lokkal is micro-internet. Most people, individuals and small businesses, are being left behind by the internet as it is. Lokkal makes internet technology work for "most people".
Lokkal organizes local online markets, so that customers who prefer to buy both online and local can do so. In this way, Lokkal levels the playing field, making the internet work for small businesses. Lokkal is Small Business Saturday every day.
Based on their viewership, Lokkal rewards content providers for their content. You build the website, you get the profits. Based on your viewership, Lokkal will pay you to curate what interests you: shoes, jazz, animals, toddlers, art, ice cream, bicycling...
Jaron Lanier (the "Father of Virtual Reality") says that when you push everything through one filter you get a z-curve, a steeply peaked curve with very little room at the top. We see this with online music sales, where 5% of the musicians make 95% of the sales.
With multiple filters, such as there will be with Lokkal, the z-curve's pinnacle becomes a broader, lower summit, with room for a lot of people. This more equitable distribution of income allows many more people to pursue what interests them, as they now get paid for what was before a hobby or a dream.
Wall - Community/Social Network
Event Calendar
Magazine
Two Weekly Newsletters
