R Community Co-Founders (Left to right): Kevin Arnold, Scott Plautz
[An edited version of this article will appear in my “Business Matters” column in the Los Altos Town Crier in October]
Some of us have grown up watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. That was the good old times when we knew our neighbors and what was happening around our town.
Times have changed. This sense of hyper-local connection has diminished over the years as we get more digitally connected via social media and the Internet. The irony is that despite being connected with others on social media, some of us feel lonelier than ever because we are not connected in local communities where we live, work, or play.
Making of A Game Changer
This is all going to change. R Community, a local start-up based in Los Gatos, has developed a new kind of social community platform, whereby local municipalities, organizations, businesses, and consumers can connect and experience everything local, accessible in one platform, with the ability to quickly locate relevant information in a simple directory.
R Community is led by two technology veterans and community leaders, Scott Plautz and Kevin Arnold, whose combined sales and marketing, management, UX design and engineering background is paving the way in building a great social community platform that facilitates access to connections, relevant and curated content, and affinity among local communities.
“R Community is different than other social media platforms because we truly believe that having a strong sense of community helps us thrive, leading happier and healthier lives,” said Plautz. “The platform starts from a personal level, building around your interests and preferences. It pushes feeds to you based on content and business categories that you want to hear from and interact with.”
Building Strong Local Community
R Community delivers curated content conveniently to your phone and puts you in control of what you want to receive. It provides easy access to information from a centralized place. For example, if you like to shop with a particular vendor in town, you can select alerts on events, deals and promotions as they become available. Posts from organizations and businesses that you follow can be referenced to help you find them easily and quickly, instead of searching for them in a sea of other posts that may not be of interest to you, such as feed overloads in Facebook and Nextdoor.
“Businesses and organizations benefit from the R Community’s platform because people who want to engage with your business can find you by category, location or zip code, not limited by neighborhood boundaries such as what you may have experienced being part of Nextdoor’s private social network,” said Plautz. “People can “Like” and “Follow” your business’ profile or promotions and socially connect with the business owner or manager in a private social dialog. There are no rankings based on algorithms like those of Yelp, which are impossible to verify and often questionable. You can manage your customer experience and reputation the way you want it, without being weighed down by social discord and negative diatribes that could potentially hurt your business.”
In addition, R Community offers users greater access to an ecosystem with the inclusion of local government, chambers of commerce, libraries, recreation centers, churches, museums, etc., all contribute to the rich culture and experiences that makes each city unique.
Cities, organizations, and businesses can support each other easily and will become more interconnected as a result. According to Plautz, the net effect means everyone benefits from having more user exposure to their community’s great assets, building relationships and affinity that would result in more revenues generated for local communities, organizations and businesses.
R Community did a soft product launch in May 2019, and has plans to engage their next phase of users in Los Altos, Mountain View and other greater surrounding areas. Their app is currently available on Apple’s App Store, with a mobile friendly web interface coming this fall. For more information on R Community, visit https://r.community.
