One city that already has a lot of digital signage on public sidewalks is New York City with its LinkNYC kiosks. We can pay attention to the lessons learned in the LinkNYC implementation, to implement a better version in San Francisco.

The Link operation is now expanding to other cities including Philadelphia, PA and Newark, NJ. Intersection, the company that owns and operates the LinkNYC kiosks, closed a $150M funding round in 2017 to support its global expansion.

Some of the key similarities between our proposal and LinkNYC:

• The LinkNYC kiosks were originally implemented to replace the city's network of 9,000-13,000 payphones on public sidewalks, when the contract expired in 2014. Similarly, our proposal is to replace the city's network of 2000 print news racks on public sidewalks, whose contract with Clear Channel expired in 2022.
• NYC gave a contract to Intersection to manage the operation; similarly, we are looking for a city contract to manage the neighborhood bulletin boards.

Some of the key differences between our proposal and LinkNYC:

• Product vision:
  • Digital displays: The LinkNYC kiosks primarily display ads, with some city-wide resources as well. There is an attempt to show more local information through the Link Local program. Our vision is for the displays in SF to predominantly show local news and community information.
  • Look and feel: We want the SF kiosks to feel friendly, personal, and unique to each SF neighborhood they're in, as opposed to feeling like they're part of a national corporation. We want the hardware to look and feel more like a multi-textured local art project, rather than the same metallic kiosk drilled into thousands of public spaces. Bringing out the joy in San Francisco is one of our key guiding principles.
  • Functionality: The LinkNYC kiosks offer some functionality in addition to being a digital screen: wifi, 5G cell phone service, and USB charging. We aren't sure we need all of that.
• Business model: The core business model of the corporation that operates LinkNYC is to sell global ads. Profits from ad sales primarily go to shareholders, and also cover hardware installation, maintenance and repair, software development, and other operational expenses. We believe we can identify a locally-owned, nonprofit business model that will still cover development, installation, maintenance, repair, and operational expenses, while focusing on partnerships that boost local businesses and keeping profits in San Francisco.
• Local control: At the core of our proposal is that San Franciscans should be in control of what is in San Francisco's public spaces. National corporations that aren't based in SF and aren't beholden to anyone in SF will not design a product that meets local community needs in the same way that a locally owned and operated product can.