The BBC has an interesting story about French social networking site, Peuplade.
The site allows users in a defined geographic area, such as a city neighbourhood, to sign-up and network online with other users who live near them.
According to the article the site actively encourages people to meet other users in the real world – people they live close to but would not otherwise have come into contact with.
The site strikes me as an interesting example of how social media can help create real-life networks that would not have otherwise formed.
There are, of course, plenty of other social networking sites that could do this, but Peuplade strikes me as different as it’s targeted deliberately at people living in a specific area with the purpose of forming offline contacts.
Paris Link also has some information about Peuplade for non-French speakers.