Comment by debt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by debt | Hacker News Reader

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Sorry but NextDoor sucks in terms of being an Anti-Facebook. EveryBlock was killing it so hard and NextDoor just kind of filled the void once EveryBlock was acquired by MSNBC. I know EveryBlock is coming back though which is awesome.

Any Anti-Facebook service needs at least a good "News Feed" like Facebook does. EveryBlock had a really awesome and useful news feed. You'd see all the new permits(film locations, building, zoning, etc.) issued, crime reports, comments about community issues, events, etc. in your neighborhood. It was exactly what I thought of in terms of "hyperlocal" news. It was extremely useful even as a passive user.

NextDoor just isn't any of that. They don't have the same News Feed quality that EveryBlock had. NextDoor posts are like "I have a new Ikea desk I'm trying to get rid of" or "What's happening at 20th and Mission"-style Twitter posts. Not very informative or useful.

EveryBlock: "— Sorry, we don't cover [my zip code] —"

Not quite every block ... :-/

Have you used the service? Nextdoor absolutely has a configurable newsfeed built from scratch to be highly scalable...it seems like you're forming your opinion based on outdated information.

There's also a feed of "Nearby Neighborhoods" and a City Platform that feeds in alerts and information from police and local government.

It's literally everything you described and more.

I still use NextDoor, but they somehow(even though EveryBlock is much older) don't have nearly as much data as EveryBlock seemed to have access too. Or maybe EveryBlock had a much better design that seemed to communicate the data they had more effectively than NextDoor.

EveryBlock had solved a good-"News Feed"-for-the-neighborhood problem. NextDoor has yet do that as effectively.

Everyblock tried to pull in public data about the neighborhood and post it automatically. I've never seen a NextDoor post that wasn't human generated. That's the main difference.

That's incredibly useful.. Imagine if people got involved in something like that which also piped in local, county, and State political news.. Like proposed bills and upcoming votes.

Everyblock pulls in Chicago public data pretty well, it's one of my favorite things about the site.

I'm thankful to have Everyblock back in Chicago (even if it primarily serves as a do-go project by Comcast now). I truly appreciate all the automatically pulled in data-- learned about new restaurants, violent crimes etc.

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