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Upset about EveryBlock's closure? Check out Nextdoor.com

nextdoor.com

25 pointsmippie_moe10 comments

I was hesitant with NextDoor but I've found they do in fact provide very real value. At least for living in a city like San Francisco where you're not likely to actually know many of your neighbors.

My only concern is that it's starting to turn into a FUD (fear, uncertainty, and death) distribution machine. Pando Daily gave them a great review for keeping neighbors informed about crime[1]. However, now crime, muggings, etc are most of what I see on the site. Has my neighborhood suddenly become significantly less safe? Why don't I actually see this increase anywhere around me? Am I just that unaware or is this just a lot of noise? I don't actually have an answer, but it raises the question: is this actually good for me to consume or is this just the go to place to be afraid of your neighborhood?

That said, I've gotten great advice on where to find live dungeness crab in the city through the site.

[1] http://pandodaily.com/2013/01/22/nextdoors-unexpected-killer...

FWIW, your complaints that crime-information has taken over the site discussion could be applied to every news source in the history of news.

Hence, the saying, "If it bleeds, it leads"

I'm using nextdoor in my neighborhood and its great. Non-technical folks are signed up and chatting with each other, sharing tips on local businesses and neighborhood crime.

I think the FUD aspect is unfortunately just part of the kind of communication it facilitates. Neighborhood mailing lists, blogs, Facebook groups – they all end up spreading information about crime in a way that makes the neighborhood feel less safe. If there's a solution to this, I think it would be social instead of technical. Also at a certain point as the neighborhood communication matures it gets better, IMHO – people need to learn how best to communicate with each other, and there's no other way to do that than practice.

The city I live in made some sort of deal with Nextdoor.com and it was presented as something we should try out. I don't remember the details, but each neighborhood had to get some number of signups or it would go away.

I signed up, and was thoroughly unimpressed. After searching for a way to un-signup, I resorted to emailing the site. They said if I leave, I cannot sign up again. What kind of lame threat is that?

I'm glad I left and haven't looked back. No idea if it ever caught traction here.

There is a next door group in my neighborhood. It's by no means local news. It's a mix of complaining about parking and things like that, links to actual local news (local paper/online journal), asking for recommendations for babysitters and plumbers, and trying to hock/get stuff; much more neighborly things and much less "hyperlocal news"

I have been encouraged to try out Nextdoor, and I am convinced they could provide a good service. But, I cannot convince myself it will be profitable and stick around. How will nextdoor make money? The normal rule seems to be--if you can't tell what is being sold, you are. Is that the case here?

Why are we forced to submit information or login to just browse the site? At the bottom of the page, the site promises to show you cities in which NextDoor actually exists...but it takes a full four clicks into an ever-deepening nest to find out that there is nothing for the city I've chosen:

https://nextdoor.com/find-neighborhood/ (Select a state)

https://nextdoor.com/find-neighborhood/fl/ (Select a city)

https://nextdoor.com/find-neighborhood/fl/green-acres--lakew... (Select a neighborhood)

https://nextdoor.com/find-neighborhood/fl/green-acres/ (Select a...neighborhood...within a neighborhood??)

How about showing a list of actual neighborhood/cities in which NextDoor actually exists?

edit: below the fold on the right side is a link to a "demo website"

http://demo.trynextdoor.com/news_feed/

The items look recent so I don't know if it's just a default "actual" neighborhood for the demo wrapper or just designed to look up to date. Looking at some of the pages...I can see how this is helpful for neighborhoods but it doesn't quite fill the data-niche that EveryBlock had...besides actual city data (which likely required bespoke scrapers/data-storage scripts), EB pulled down local Yelp/Flickr/Craigslist data to populate the site...the Nextdoor demo site looks entirely populated with user submissions, which may be sparse for some areas.

Agreed, navigating to my neighborhood in DC was awkward; I had to pick "Washington" from the cities within "DC" and then had to guess which half of the alphabet I thought my neighborhood would be in (and I was wrong). Nobody familiar with DC would set it up this way.

And it really needs a "Browse as Guest" button. I don't want to set up an account for a ghost town especially with such a crazy signup process (you want my credit card?!)

The idea behind NextDoor is that you are invited via snail-mail so you have verified neighbors. You need a "seed" person in a neighborhood to sign up and then sign up some neighbors. It's real power is in community neighborhoods (gated communities, condo/townhome complexes). I found it to be a great tool to find out what's going on with the neighbors and a far more trustable marketplace than Craigslist for buying/selling items. However, if your living area isn't as "community-oriented", getting any sort of traction can be difficult. As it's entirely crowdsourced, if it's not in an area, it's because nobody's signed up to be a "seed" and invited neighbors, as opposed to NextDoor themselves not providing infrastructure/data.

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