ScoopLoop a Website for Your Community

*This is a collaborative post, however, all opinions are our own.

ScoopLoop a Website for Your Community - Women using digital tablet.

ScoopLoop a Website for Your Community

About a month ago I wrote about a new community website called ScoopLoop that is now available in your local area. ScoopLoop is a website aimed at helping people, neighbours, connect with one another.

Over the last month, four other Mums and I based in my local area of Bracknell have been trying out ScoopLoop to see what we think. Here is our verdict.

My Thoughts

I like the idea of a community-centric website that is different from Facebook. A place where you can find out about events, local resources and trades people. The best places to eat, places to take your children and get rid of things you no longer need.

I actually really like ScoopLoop I like the idea of a community-centric website that is different from Facebook. A place where you can find out about events, local resources and trades people. The best places to eat, places to take your children and get rid of things you no longer need. But more than this, that you can find, meet and talk to people in your local area. Having moved into this area knowing no one and not even what day I should put the bins out, having a website like this at the time would have been awesome and a lot less alienating.

Yes, you can get something like this on Facebook, there are local Facebook groups, but I found ScoopLoop less of a busy place. Simpler with nothing else going and no distractions such as those pesky cat videos. I think my main criticism would be that it needs to have more people using it, but this will happen over time as it grows in popularity.

I found the site simple to use and intuitive. One small thing is that location tool isn’t picking up exactly where I live, it wasn’t quite right saying I lived in the next section of town, not a huge deal, and you are able to change it manually. The other thing I would improve is how to search for your friends and people who are on the platform in your local area. You can connect with friends via email and Facebook, but once I was friends with them I wasn’t quite sure how to go about finding them on the platform or searching for people you are not necessarily connected with yet. It would be quite cool to maybe have an on my street feature even, so you could connect and discuss issues on a micro-local level.

Will I continue to use it after this trial? Yes, I think I will as long as the website grows in popularity, which is where you lovely reader come in!

What the Mums Thought

ScoopLoop a Website for Your Community - screengrab

As I mentioned above, 4 local Mums also joined me in trying out ScoopLoop, here are their thoughts.

Holly, Bracknell

I like the fact that you can ask questions to the local community group about anything, enabling others to offer personal advice and feedback based on their local experiences.

I found ScoopLoop to be an easily accessible website to find out community information. I like the fact that you can ask questions to the local community group about anything, enabling others to offer personal advice and feedback based on their local experiences. Having young children myself this aspect of the website is particularly useful to gain personal feedback from other parents.

It is also great to be able to share my own knowledge and experience of the local area with others and to have the ability to post about local events that others may be interested in. I have been part of other community groups and although useful you don’t always know the people you are asking advice from. I feel a strong point of ScoopLoop is you are asking for advice and reviews from friends or friends of friends and therefore feel the opinion can be trusted more and would give me greater peace of mind.

I will continue to use ScoopLoop and hopefully as the community grows it will prove even more useful.

Lisa, Bracknell

I’d definitely use it to connect to people more local to me for ideas, Mum & kid connections, events and selling/buying.

I found ScoopLoop easy to log-in and use. You can log-in with Facebook, or if you would prefer to just with a user ID and password. I prefer not to share everything with Facebook, so I liked the different options.

I logged in via my iPhone and it was easy to view and navigate on a mobile, which isn’t always the case with other sites and I would have to go the desktop site. I thought this was laid out very well which easy in the eye backgrounds and text.

The landing page was easy to scroll down to read recent posts, there aren’t many posts at the moment, but hopefully, this will change. Posts in your feed are only from people in your local area, although it wasn’t clear how far this covered. The surrounding areas does not appear to have all areas of Bracknell, and it would be good see a wider radius to include Sandhurst, Crowthorne, Bagshot, so possible a 3-5 mile radius.

At the top of the page you can ‘write a post to your neighbours’, you can add friends which is easy by clicking on ‘add to friends’. Some things I would love to see added to ScoopLoop, an anon post if a person wants to be anonymous, specific pages for buying and selling and things to do in the local area.

I’d definitely use it to connect to people more local to me for ideas, Mum & kid connections, events and selling/buying. I find sometimes on people on Facebook pages are too far away.

ScoopLoop create and event

Anne, Bracknell

I think it would be a great site to share information with local people.

I have had the opportunity to access and review a new online forum website that gives local people access to information, events and other families within their area where they can swap useful hints and tips, information about local events.

I accessed the website through my iPhone and it came up user-friendly for my screen size. I liked the colour scheme and the size and style of the letters are readable.

I had to first register to able to use and comment on the site. This was easy to do. You can add information about yourself and family and also add where you live so the site would then tailor information and events to your area which I found very useful.

I then had a chance to look at the site. As it’s quite new there weren’t that many posts to look at, however, it still gave me an idea of what people wanted to know about and whether it would be an interest to me and my family or whether I could respond to the post too.

You can also add friends (a bit like Facebook). I was added and received an email to let me know this. So I logged in and tried to find where I should accept. This I found a little confusing as it didn’t come up when I initially logged in.

I find navigating through the site a little confusing and needs to be a little more simple. But otherwise, I think it would be a great site to share information with local people.

Kirsty, Bracknell

I also felt more connected to real people than on other social media too, giving a greater sense of community which can only be a good thing in this digitally driven society.

When I first looked at this site, I didn’t think it would be able to compete with other social media sites where lots of local information can already be found. However, this is completely different. You are in contact with members of your own community who can answer questions about the local area from first-hand experience. No more trawling through Facebook looking for the right group to get the advice I need, to find out about events or other need to know information. No more searching the web looking for websites that are often lacking the information I’m looking for. Instead, it’s all here, from people who know. Ask a question and generally, it’s answered quite quickly by multiple people providing real insight and experiences. Just what you need when you’re pressed for time and want to find answers quickly.

I also felt more connected to real people than on other social media too, giving a greater sense of community which can only be a good thing in this digitally driven society. I can really see this being a fantastic help to lots of people in the area, particularly groups who may feel alone within a community.

I personally knew no one when I moved to this area, something like this would have really benefitted me in terms of finding out what was happening locally. Since I had my son I can really appreciate the value of something like this site. New people to the area and new mums (in particular) need all the help and support out there, and I can’t think of a better way to bring that all together in one place.

The Verdict

The verdict seems to be that while there are a few glitches, and it needs some more people to sign up, but that ScoopLoop is a great way to connect with your local community. So why not sign up and give it a go? www.ScoopLoop.com.

10 thoughts on “ScoopLoop a Website for Your Community”

  1. This has the potential to be such a great tool! I am not new to my town but I certainly lack friendship, I think I’d truly benefit from this!

    Reply
  2. This sounds like such a good idea, I’m not a massive fan of facebook and only go on to keep up to date with whats happening in the community so this would be perfect for me.

    Reply
  3. This is such a great idea! It’s nice to have something like Scoop Loop where it’s just your local area news & events coming up. Like you said it weeds out the cat videos! lol Will go check this out, thanks x

    Reply
  4. It sounds like an interesting concept. Facebook can get very distracting with so many notifications popping up. Love the idea of it being a smaller community scale.

    Reply
  5. This sounds fab, we have local Facebook pages but things get lost easily in the timeline. I’m off to give this a go. I run our local estate Facebook group so perhaps we can look at migrating it if it works for us. We’ll keep you posted.

    Reply
  6. I must admit I am not a great Facebook fan and opted to do another NCT class with my second to meet people. Yet it sounds like I could get similar from this network. I will definitely be having a look at my local area, as I often don’t have time to think about whats going on until I have my day off and then think… right what next!! xx

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.