Brett Banter

If you haven’t checked out Greenville’s latest and greatest online social forum, whatifgreenville.com, you should. Beyond the sleek design and entertaining posts (what if Greenville had a cruise ship port? Well, we’d need an ocean first…), it’s really a groundbreaking idea. Whatifgreenville.com is a collaborative website sponsored by Greenville Forward, an organization dedicated to improving Greenville’s quality of life. The website is more than a sounding board for personal causes; the developers claim to actually put you in touch with the people who can make your vision a reality.

And they seem to do that, to an extent; while many ideas go without response, a post about a teen council received a reply from an administrator asking for more details. From an outsider’s perspective, the site seems serious about implementing concrete ideas, but there’s a potential problem in the site’s heavy reliance on social media to get conversations flowing. Ideally, users are supposed to post about their favorite ideas from the site, and through viral spread of information the community will latch on. Not a bad idea in theory, but the designers may have overestimated the use of whatifgreenville.com. It seems like the posts are all made by regular users, so if only a handful of people are reading this site, then its influence can only spread to their social networking friends. Not enough of an impact to make things happen, as the developers would like. They might need a more hands-on approach, at least initially, to validate the site’s purpose.

The site could also be very useful in bringing new businesses to the area. Different restaurants and retail are already a hot topic on the site, and market researchers could definitely benefit from a one-stop-shop that tells them what, and where, new developments are desired. Other than that, the opportunities for this site are many. It’s definitely something to watch, and wonder, “What if?”