Discover Hertford Online Forum

I got a flier shoved through my door for a website 'streetlife.com' ... It seems to claim to offer something a bit like this forum (which already exists and is clearly popular) and freecycle (which already exists and is very popular in the Hertford area)...

Had a quick look at the website (intellectual curiosity, mostly) and it's one of those ones you can't see anything in until you've signed up and there's very little information on who owns it etc. I imagine they are hoping to amass lots of people they can then advertise to.

Any thoughts on this "competitor"? Will anyone use it? Anyone seen the 'inside'? Anyone see it as a problem for the likes of this forum? I was quite surprised that it was actually being advertised via flyers, either they are well funded or desperate for users (or both)!

Although it may appear that way, I don't think you have to sign up.

https://www.streetlife.com/area/hertford/

I agree that they seem to be somewhat opaque about who they are. There's no contact or ownership details - the contact link just takes you to a support page.

A little digging will reveal their Press Contact page

https://www.streetlife.com/about/contact/

And their "team" can be found at

https://www.streetlife.com/about/team/

I understand they're rolling out county by county.

Archant pumped £600,000 into them back in July 2013.

It was originally set up by a guy in Battersea who didn't have the gumption to knock on his neighbours' door after he was burgled and assumes that all communities are devoid of neighbourliness and couldn't possibly have thought up anything as clever as a local online community forum or Facebook page.

Aha... Guess I should have found the "hidden" information before commenting... It's much easier to find now I've looked on a laptop instead of mobile

I've signed up - it's free and it's easy. I don't see a problem with it - as you say it's a cross between this site and some others like FreeCycle and I think there's room on Cyberspace for more than one community forum per area.

Got the flier too but am wary of providing contact details to sites like this for fear they will sell them on to pesky junk mailers! It may be legitimate but I'll keep my powder dry for now and stick to whinging on the forum for now.