Biz Stone’s Obvious invests time and money into Neighborland to help citizens unite

Obvious Corporation, the new endeavor of Twitter founders Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Jason Goldman, has announced that it will be investing both ‘capital and effort’ into community connection startup Neighborland.

Stone, in a post on the Obvious site, says that they’re doing so because they like what the team there was trying to do with regards to connecting citizens and neighbors in order to “collectively discuss issues, propose ideas, and unite to have their voices heard.”

Neighborland is an online community founded by founded by Dan Parham, Tee Parham, and Candy Chang at Civic Center in New Orleans.

The community allows users to connect and organize to accomplish goals using events. The creators describe the way that they do this like so:

No issue is too big or too small to bring up on Neighborland. If it matters to you, then it matters. Our community identifies achievable goals and we discuss how to accomplish them. We also use simple tactics like stickers, spray chalk, and physical signage to bring people together and spark conversations in public space. We are providing residents, neighborhood organizations, economic development groups, and municipalities with a powerfully simple platform to connect and make good things happen. A healthy neighborhood is a connected neighborhood.

Basically, the organization allows for communities to unite around a common goal or topic, no matter what the difficulties may be in terms of physical location. Providing a centralized online location for people in proximity can help to focus efforts that may have otherwise been duplicated or neglected because of lack of a support structure.

Stone says that, with the help of Obvious, Neighborland can build a traditionally successful business that also does a “lot of good along the way.”

Obvious Corporation has previously announced involvement in developing curated online discussion forum Branch and Lift an “application for unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement.”