Vancouver Start Up Wants to Connect Locals

After my post  about hyper-local Vancouver sites popping up all over the place, I got a few great emails.  Thanks.  This one from Kevin Smith particularly stood out.  It's about his site–appropriately called, Lokl.   Lokl is an online community for Vancouverites that lists events, restaurants, shops, services and attractions–what Kevin says is the one-stop shop answer I was looking for.  Newly launched in January of 2009, the site is still in very early beta and adding new features, daily.  Kevin built the technology behind the machine and he also self-financed the project. (Investors are welcome to email him.)

There is so much stuff that is scattered, and I wanted to bring the community together.  It’s a play on local search.  How do you go about navigating everything that happens in a community? That’s what the site is about.  To find a community within the community.

Once you sign up for free, you can create a profile, add events you like, comment, see what others are up to or what others are doing on the site.  You can also tag events, enter your own event and  you can also see (and meet) other people attending the same events or having the same interests as you.  Kevin hopes this online bond will be the catalyst to fostering that authentic aspect of peer-to-peer or word-of-mouth following that he needs for his site to take off in popularity.

Kevin says the next phase for the site includes rolling out a comprehensive database of content, adding mobile features, hiring help to write about places to visit and possibly adding a local "news element" to the site.  People could essentially post news going on in their neighbourhoods and also connect, rate and comment on those news items.  If you have any questions, email him at kevin@lokl.com.