Finding my street on yourstreet

Say you're relocating to a new city. You do research, you drive around the neighborhoods. But how do you really know the character of a place without actually living there? Enter yourstreet.com, a site that describes itself as "a vibrant community of homeowners, buyers and renters sharing inside knowledge about their local neighborhoods."

How vibrant a community it becomes is yet to be seen. It's still in beta, and so far includes just five cities (and some adjacent areas). One of them is Seattle, which is described as a "moderate sellers' market" based on input from 29 users. Not exactly scientific, no.

The larger question may be whether people living in a wonderful, vibrant neighborhood will really want to advertise the fact on the Web, or even come in from their community barbeques and softball games to sit and the computer and write up a review of their street.