A new way to be neighborly
Social network Nextdoor facilitates online community connections.
Back in the halcyon days when people knew their neighbors, folks sat on the front porch and talked about what was going on in the community.
Thanks to a free and private social network for neighborhoods called Nextdoor, neighbors are connecting on a hyperlocal level over high-speed connections and computer screens.
“Technology has made out friendship and business communities a lot stronger,” says Nirav Tolia, Nextdoor co-founder and CEO. “But we found it interesting that technology hadn’t done a lot to strengthen what we believe is one of the most important communities of them all, and that’s the community right outside your front door.”
Nextdoor is a secure website and mobile app whose members must verify they live in the neighborhood. As people join, they can ask questions, exchange advice and alert other members to lost pets, coyote sightings or burglaries as well as spread word about new businesses, yard sales and community events.
When the street clock in Kenneth Village was running slow, a resident of the northwest Glendale, Calif., neighborhood started a GoFundMe campaign to fix it. The resident shared the link with
Nextdoor Glenwood North community members, which includes Davidia Barba, who introduced Nextdoor to her neighborhood after a rash of burglaries.
“We ended up with $3,500, and he arranged to have the clock fixed,” Barba says, adding another member used Nextdoor to organize
a fundraiser that ultimately put a Glendale float back in the Tournament of Roses Parade. “It’s a very proactive group.”
The latest activity pops up on the home page. To find specific content, the site is organized by categories to allow for easy browsing. An Urgent Alert feature allows neighbors to send out time-sensitive messages via text message and email.
“It’s been great as far as bringing people together,” Barba says, adding there
are times when neighbors argue. “We have 780 members, and everyday more people are coming, on so it’s hard to get everyone to mesh. But overall we’re a pretty cohesive and respectful group.”
Glenwood North is one of the more than 100,000 neighborhoods across the United States that have signed up with Nextdoor since its 2011 launch.
Tolia was in his late 30s, recently married, thinking about starting a family
and in a new house when he helped start the company with Sarah Leary and Prakash Janakiraman, all of whom were older than the typical Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
Where he was in life had an influence.
“My wife and I both grew up in tightknit communities, and we were missing that sense of connection to our neighborhood living in San Francisco versus where I grew up in Texas, and she grew up in Palos Verdes,”
Tolia says. “As time has elapsed, we started to realize that this need for communicating with people around us is not necessarily restricted to newly married folks.”
Pomona, Calif., resident Fred Van Allen started the Nextdoor Lincoln Park Historic community as a vehicle for getting out word about his open houses.
Allen, a Realtor with First Team, is a vintage home expert who lives and sells real estate in the historic district of Lincoln Park. But it’s since evolved into more of a community chat room where users get in passionate debates about politics, promote and recap what was said at Neighborhood Watch meetings or alert users (including police) to new homeless encampments.
“It’s just like talking on the front porch in the old days except we’re doing it on the computer, and people just love it,” he says. “It’s community.”