11. JMetros
Yesterday, I spoke about ShulShopper, a tool which helps individuals find and create personally meaningful prayer experiences in their local community. Today, we’re going to take that model to its logical extension with Yelp meets Outside.in for the Jewish community, or a project otherwise known as JMetros.
Navigating the terrain of one’s local Jewish community can be quite challenging — whether you’re new in town, new to Jewish involvement, or even a savvy, seasoned veteran. Finding the right synagogue, the right day school or after-school program for your kids, a good place to shop for Judaica and kosher food, engaging public events to attend or new friends with whom to build relationships can be so daunting a task that a person who would otherwise invest themselves in their local Jewish community may instead shy away.
Jews are searching for ways to connect and build Jewish community, but there are precious few resources available to them which enable them to do so. What is needed is a central, one-stop resource that provides individuals with access to the information and resources they need to actively engage in their local communities.
JMetros can minimize the barriers for entry into Jewish participation by providing an interactive online Jewish community news portal, resource guide and social networking platform tailored to the purpose of connecting Jews with other Jewish individuals, organizations, news and events in their local communities.
JMetros would be targeted to all members of the Jewish community, from the “next gen” type looking for new friends, to the young family searching for the right day school, to older adults who want to enroll in an enrichment program. Whether an individual or a family, young or old, religious or secular, JMetros would invite users to:
- Browse or share national and local Jewish news, blogs, tweets, events, announcements and classified ads;
- Search, map and explore listings of local synagogues, day schools, community centers, cultural institutions, life-cycle event facilitators, social action initiatives, kosher restaurants and more;
- Read and share helpful reviews about these institutions and services from other members of the local Jewish community;
- Find and connect with like-minded individuals in the area.
JMetros would be divided into three content layers:
- A national layer driven by leading Jewish content providers
- A local layer consisting of individual nodes, each covering a distinct Jewish metropolitan or regional area (eg., http://jmetros.com/dallas or http://jmetros.com/kansascity) and each managed by a local content partner with a locally driven editorial vision; and finally
- A user-generated layer, featuring localized Jewish content self-published on JMetros or aggregated from existing popular Web services.
The national layer could feature international, national and breaking news coverage, as well as regional content from local regional partners. It could also feature educational and lifestyle content provided by national Jewish publications.
The local layer would consist of:
- Local news and features produced by regional content partners
- Community listings with user reviews and online community features
- Local ritual observance times (candle-lighting, etc.)
- User-driven community events calendar
- User-driven lifecycle event announcements
- User-driven classified ads
- A robust social networking framework that lends itself to institutional applications (such as synagogue members and alumni networks)
- Mobile framework
I unfortunately cannot go further into detail about this project — and it does get quite detailed, with even a complete profit model — because it is now the proprietary knowledge of JTA Inc., and I am bound by a non-disclosure agreement. That said, this project, in different manifestations, has become the holy grail of many a Jewish organization, including the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, which is now working on such a site for Jewish Bostonians, called JewishBoston.com, while two others are in the works for Jewish Angelenos by the Jewish Television Network and JDub Records respectively.
In a recent tweet, PresenTense co-founder Ariel Beery wrote, “Heard: LA Fed gave a large grant to Jewcy (JDub) to build a site with same functions as @jewishboston .com – too bad! More coordination?”
While I would never say “too bad” about a deserving colleague receiving a grant, I do share Ariel’s reservations about the wastefulness of every Jewish community creating their own version of the same Web site. When I was at JTA pitching this project to both Jewish newspapers and federations, I was disheartened to discover just how resistant most were to working with each other in creating a national platform. As a result, we will now see millions of dollars wasted on dozens of versions of this project that, in all likelihood, will not be as good individually as they would otherwise have been had everyone worked together. And that is a sad, sad fact.
Nevertheless, there’s always room for competition in the market, and I guarantee my vision has the advantage. So if any megafunders out there want to step in the fray and try their hand at the ultimate Jewish community portal, I recommend giving JTA’s development director a call.
