Now, you can report those potholes while checking out your ex-boyfriend’s photos — and get real-time status updates about the fix on your own Facebook wall.
That’s because SeeClickFix, the New Haven-based website that lets people flag problems in their neighborhoods, has a new Facebook application. The company calls it a real-life version of the insanely popular online game FarmVille. But instead of getting points for harvesting crops, SeeClickFix will give you “civic points” for reporting problems or getting them fixed.
The Facebook interface is linked to the company’s reporting database, so complaints lodged on the social-networking site will be dealt with in the same way as those entered through the network of websites that include SeeClickFix on their home pages. All the Facebook items will appear in the same stream on those sites, just as calls to the company’s toll-free number do.
SeeClickFix CEO Ben Berkowitz said he doesn’t think the Facebook application and the outside websites are “mutually exclusive” when it comes to users. Facebook should help the company expand its reach, he said.
“The tool is much more easily used when it’s exposed to 600 million people,” he said, referencing the social-networking site’s enormous membership.
Another advantage of Facebook: Users are logged in when they post concerns.
“People tend to be a little more well-behaved when they’re not anonymous,” he said.
You can install the Facebook app here.
Will the next step be an Angry Birds version of SeeClickFix? Not in the works at the moment. While some political figures might regard the SeeClickFix complaints as the civic equivalent of a furious flying cardinal, users will have to user their imaginations for that one.