I’ve been working on a side project called Something Noticed, starting in my hometown of Kingman, Arizona. The simplest way I’ve found to explain it is: online shopping, but make it local. The idea is to give people one place to browse what small shops, makers, collectors, and other local sellers in their town actually have available. Not full inventory. Not another Amazon. More like a digital flea market for the town. Businesses and local contributors can have profiles and share a small number of interesting things they currently want people to see. Those items appear in a shared local Flea Feed, so someone can browse across different sellers instead of visiting each business separately. Around that, I’m building a local page called Hereabouts with: • Flea Items from local shops and makers • business and contributor profiles • small discoveries around town called Sparks • local happenings and news The goal is to make the whole thing feel like browsing your town, not searching a directory. I’m at the point where the biggest questions are no longer technical: Will people regularly browse what their town has for sale? Will small businesses keep a few items current if people are actually viewing them? Can the local discovery and news content around the shopping experience give people enough reason to come back? I’d especially like to hear from anyone who has worked on local marketplaces, two-sided platforms, or products that depended on small businesses contributing content.   submitted by   /u/spiritualnewb [link]   [comments]