This is an interesting post about Localism.com which is the community facing part of the Active Rain Network, a realtor focused website.

"It is a social network based around communities," said Jonathan Washburn, ActiveRain CEO. "We're trying to bring the geographic community back to the beginning -- to bring people close together who are really close in proximity."

It's interesting to note that they are retooling the Localism site to be more community focused.

The pricepoint to sponsor a community is worth taking note of, they have to have a lot of communities active before it starts to pay off.  But they do have the realtor database already, so they probably have a good head start on that content already.

The other nteresting point is that they recently raised $2.75 Million in funding which gives them some money to grow with.  It'll be interesting to see how localism performs in the search engines and if they are successful in attracting the main stream community, not just the tech happy realtors.