NextDoor raises $110M at a $1.1B valuation | Hacker News Reader

NextDoor raises $110M at a $1.1B valuation

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113 pointsnikunjk63 comments

While the app is kinda poor the idea and network is fantastic. We had a spree of burglaries in our neighborhood that caused about 95% of our residents to join and we coordinated, setup cameras and even got a photo of the guy used by the police in his capture.

It's really helpful. I just wish the mobile app worked better.

I think with this funding, that problem will be (hopefully) solved.

I joined this a few years back and at first it seemed like a really nice concept. Two things turned me off to it:

1) Way too much email. There is no weekly digest so you are either going to get daily emails for the different categories/types of notifications or none at all. I got sick of all the email and unsubscribed.

2) It really started to depress me seeing all the racist posts and petty complaints people in my neighborhood were posting. Up until then I thought of most of my neighbors as nice people. After seeing all the "suspicious black teenager seen on X street" posts and other awful petty stuff I started to feel like I would rather not know what they think. Basically Nextdoor makes me feel like I live in a neighborhood of racist, bullying busybodies who have way too much time on their hands.

Exactly my experience. Turns out my neighborhood is full of kooks. One of my favorite threads is a group of neighbors encouraging everyone to boycott the local Von's until it stops being so "ghetto". In retrospect I think nextdoor might be a good way to scope out a neighborhood when you're in the market for a new house.

Doesn't work like that. You have to verify your residence in order to join that neighborhood.

Agreed on the second item. It's sort of like Facebook - I liked people better before I saw what they post. In both cases I suspect that a lot of it has to do with the kind of people that are predisposed to post things.

That said, it's not all bad. It can be handy for recommendations for tradesmen, lost & found notices, and that sort of thing.

Way too much email. So you go to turn it off.

And find that there's no "Stop sending me email" button. Instead, click, click, click, TWENTY TIMES to turn off or change email notifications:

https://twitter.com/FireBeyond/status/572889977589141505

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_NQZfsVAAI3VPn.png

Email notifications are totally configurable. I've set mine to "urgent alerts" & "free stuff" only, and otherwise just get daily digests.

These are things I thought of when I heard of it a few months ago. Sad to hear they are true.

I was discussing the email problem with a friend a few months back. Without researching further, I just assumed they pivoted the business to become a spam farm.

One of the things I found frustrating about Nextdoor when I used it a year ago was that it defines the neighborhood for you. I have a mailing list I created several years ago for my street which has been a very effective way of communicating with each other, especially since we have a street block party every year and a lot of families on the street have kids who play with each other. But there's not way to create a micro-neighborhood where messages only go to other folks in the micro-community (unless they've recently added that feature). When I look at my defined neighborhood now I'm not even sure how they chose the boundaries. It doesn't correspond to neighborhood in the normal sense (capitol hill in Seattle), or to zipcode. It seems like some arbitrarily carved out chunk of my zipcode... weird.

I tried to setup a mailing list a few times. What I found out is that even though I live in neighbourhood where most people are white collar and sit at a computer all day long, a lot of people don't use email outside of work. Accountants, lawyers, engineers, various business analysts of different types - none of them use email other than to sign up for whatever social networks they use.

I had the same experience as you. The Alameda, CA neighborhood I'm in was huge on ND. What I really didn't enjoy was all the forum complaining being directly delivered to my email box. NextDoor has a very large job in balancing the personal and personality that makes up neighborhoods and the impersonality of online discussions.

I'm also in Alameda and recently setup a email group and directory for our neighborhood that also has block parties and neighborhood watch meetings. Shoot me an email if you want to compare notes.

Hm, also in Alameda, but my neighborhood seems to be mostly ads. Seems to be really hit or miss.

I just searched for my address and no neighborhood is defined yet. It's asking me to set up a new neighborhood and asking for me to define the boundaries.

> One of the things I found frustrating about Nextdoor when I used it a year ago was that it defines the neighborhood for you.

That's not true. When you set up a neighborhood (if you are the first to do so) you can define the neighborhood house-by-house or by drawing a boundary. I don't know how they handle boundary disputes.

Regarding subgroups, you can create discussion groups within the neighborhood, and make access limited / invite only. So you could have a street by street set of groups, so each group would get general neighborhood plus street only content.

At a Hack for Change, we started something along these lines. Ideally there would be your predefined neighborhoods and your trusted neighbors. This is an exercise to move towards that idea.

https://github.com/unsay/vicini

There are a lot of different demographic / geographic boundaries. Among them: ZIP codes, ZIP+4, census blocks, census tracts.

At higher levels: urban boundaries, MSA, SMA, and CSA, usually defined along county (or parish or borough) boundaries.

They let you wee who your "lead" is in your list of offices. Usually that person will be the one who would know about why lines were drawn a certain way

Impressive. As a New Yorker, the concept behind the company is completely foreign. You live in a building for years, share walls and common space, and never get (or care) to know your neighbors.

Only 1 other person with a profile photo in my building (Out of ~500 adults). The entire 'hood (5,000-10,000 people) only has 51 people registered (16 with a profile photo) and no updates since January.

The thing is, each neighborhood has it's own content ecosystem that probably takes much time, money, and sheer effort to build up. It's not like Facebook where the network builds on top of itself once it's let loose. There's no "global virality" like FB or Twitter but that's probably a feature by design.

The upside I can see with this is that it's incredibly difficult to replicate what Nextdoor have created and that probably plays a part in why it's now so valuable. I mean the stickyness of a network like this is insane.

It's easy for a WhatsApp or SnapChat to come in, ride off of users' contacts or address-book and build massive social networks to compete with Facebook. How the hell can you compete with what Nextdoor is doing without a significant investment of time, resources, and just grinding it out.

To me, this looks like a classic example of "Doing Things That Don't Scale" and a company benefiting tremendously from it.

Their verification system is their secret sauce. They do a great job of making sure no spammers, scammers, marketers, or ad men get in the system. Because, the last thing you want to see around the campfire is an ad. If they monetize by selling your data to anyone and everyone, the system will break down. The kind of people that use those systems are not the neighborhood watch type.

I am not sure about you, but if you break it down, knowing that 51 people in your neighborhood will see your updates is still empowering. I live on the corner of Central Park South and 7th Ave, and I get cool updates from the few people that share my area. Sure, this is the same area where apartments sell for 100M, but yeah. And also, I might add the best thing to do is just go to a pub and meet people. Some of my neighbors are truly inspiring.

I would reckon this depends a lot on your neighborhood in New York, and just how you choose to live. I know several neighbors.

I was using this early on and it's fantastic. We have 85/100 homes. We also have the police connected in so they can share specific updates or even text us during emergencies. In fact, we had a shooting, and NextDoor's emergency texting system got me info 10 min before I saw cops. VERY much a fan.

I am signed up with this, but will probably unsubscribe soon, since it is getting really annoying. Between spam and people who just post unrelated google queries.

I use ND several times a week. In my area, it is used primarily for 1) requesting/giving recommendations for home services, and 2) a discussion forum for local crime problems. It's also a local events message board of sorts.

If they got enough penetration in neighborhoods, they could potentially compete with craigslist's local classified business, by using their neighborhood restrictions to offer a classified platform with a lower likelihood of scammers, etc.

At least in my neighborhood (suburb) they have over 50% uptake.

This is the primary mechanism by which I communicate with my neighbors, organize neigborhood events, etc.

same here, only downsides: 1) you get to know your neighbors, and 2) it can turn into a real buzzkill of nothing but complainers. maybe that 2nd one is a good indicator of neighborhood decline though? not sure.

I bet there could be some truly interesting textual analysis against market values to try to identify ways of predicting market trends in real estate

It's definitely a circular issue. The ones most likely to complain are the ones most likely to join.

Kinda like a HOA. Who -really- wants to be on a HOA Board other than someone who likes to be in other people's business/exude 'pseudo authority'/complain (and in a minority, someone who has been so badly on the receiving end of same that they're determined to thwart the system from within).

You can at least mute individuals, from their profiles. It's not the neighborhood, it's the Internet; people love to complain, and here everyone gets people to complain to.

I mean look at what we get here on Hacker News. It's people complaining all day long.

So, so meta.

How's this different from Patch and EveryBlock, both having demonstrated how to fail at monetizing "local news" communities?

It seems like crime data is the only real data of local interest/inbound traffic.

Patch didn't fail at monetizing local news, it failed at achieving profit margins. Patch had significant revenue coming in, it just had more money going out than in.

Revenue numbers were leaked at some point: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/18/inside-patchs-leaked-revenu...

The core problem is this. If 1 reporter writes "Top 6 reasons why kittens are cute - number 5 will SHOCK YOU", the potential audience is millions. You can scale your content as needed, and readers / writer is potentially unlimited.

If 1 reporter writes "Bishop School closed due to heavy rains", the potential audience is merely the students and parents of Bishop School. Your potential audience is thousands - you simply can't scale past this except in special cases (e.g., Boston bombings, school shootings, hurricanes).

tl;dr; For local news, readers / writer is simply too low and your margins suck.

(Disclaimer: I worked for Patch. However, this post is based on no inside knowledge - I know little more than what techcrunch leaked.)

> If 1 reporter writes "Top 6 reasons why kittens are cute - number 5 will SHOCK YOU", the potential audience is millions. You can scale your content as needed, and readers / writer is potentially unlimited.

Even in this scenario you still need a tremendous amount of domain authority and/or a Herculean marketing effort to achieve any kind of traction in terms of traffic.

My point is that no amount of domain authority/marketing/etc will drive much traffic to "Construction causes traffic delays on Nagar Road". Even if everyone who commutes on that road reads your article, ad revenue - cost of reporter is probably negative.

I think NextDoor is different than patch because it is almost entirely user generated content (as opposed to having paid editors). Everyblock, as far as I understand it, was really an attempt to automate distribution of data and information provided by local authorities.

The real question, which you touch on, is what do you want to talk to your neighbors about? Crime data is certainly one thing, but local email lists that I'm a part of indicate others:

* can I borrow a tool? * anyone have a recommendation for a service (lawnmower, roof replacer, etc, etc)? * I have free stuff in front of my house. * I have friends who want to move into this neighborhood, anyone looking to sell?

I think that event organization is possible, given enough uptake.

Disclaimer, I used to work for a real estate brokerage that was pursuing a neighborhood model (8z.com) and was a competitor of NextDoor.

"Everyblock, as far as I understand it, was really an attempt to automate distribution of data and information provided by local authorities."

I was an EveryBlock user in Chicago for about a year and it was definitely more that a distribution of stats (although I think they may have started out that way originally). There was a very active social neighborhood based network where people talked about what was currently going on in the neighborhood.

I think their growth model is quite aggressive too.

They have "leads" in every neighborhood and they financially reward leads for bringing in new users.

Um, do you have a citation for that?

None of the leads that I know are financially rewarded, they are just the people that happen to start the neighborhood and are often the most involved in making it take off.

I think what the above poster is referring to is the referral program where if you invite someone to Nextdoor AND that person starts a neighborhood, you get a $25 Amazon giftcard. I've personally invited a few people to Nextdoor, but all of them already had a Nextdoor website for their neighborhoods so I didn't get anything even though I referred them.

i got an offer in the mail that said i'd get paid 25$ per referral to nextdoor.

That's not per neighbor; that's if you can get an entire new neighborhood off the ground, with at least ten founding households:

https://help.nextdoor.com/customer/portal/articles/1287247-h...

Patch is completely different. Nextdoor is Facebook for neighborhoods. Patch is news for neighborhoods.

And speaking of Patch, I used to be a huge fan. Right after they had a big layoff the quality went way down and the essentially started posting non-local news to my Patch. I stopped visiting shortly after that.

I was the founder for my neighborhood and am still a lead. I had high hopes going in, but I suppose it's really just what you make of it. I have gained the most value in the feature that allows you to include in your feed (and posts) the surrounding neighborhoods, not just your own. We had thoughts that it would end up being a good mass communications mechanism but only about 70 of 260 households have signed up. Compared to Facebook Groups, the barrier to entry is far higher with Nextdoor and many folks can't be bothered to adopt yet another network/app just for this purpose. I'm also on the board of my HOA and only about 15% of households bother to show up to our annual meeting. Usually only 1-2 non-board members join the bimonthly meetings. The level of apathy can't be overstated, especially when the perceived value is so low. Nextdoor, while fairly pretty, is low on features. It's essentially only an activity stream. Compared to alternatives like http://www.i-neighbors.org, Nextdoor has nothing.

There are some things I've been very happy with:

1) There are a couple of police officers in the network around my neighborhood and they are terrific about informing and advising on crime & public safety matters. 2) For anyone a little leery of Craigslist or Freecycle, selling & giving away stuff using Nextdoor has a kind of built-in safety mechanism, since you know exactly who the person is and where they live. 3) It's merely OK for service provider recommendations. Unless you know the recommender IRL, their recs are as worthless as those from an anonymous person on the internet. It would be fantastic if they signed a partnership with Angie's List.

It's popular in our community and remains to be the sole community-based web presence for the HOA here, it's valuable to me at least.

Surprising how much money they've raised, since most of the content I see in my neighborhood is similar to craigslist.

Mostly they send a ton of email.

>Mostly they send a ton of email.

I wish they would allow sending a weekly or monthly digest. I don't find a lot of relevance to the neighborhood content available to me (certainly not enough to be justified by a daily email) but wouldn't mind getting some content occasionally to get a rough feel for what is going on with my neighbors.

GemShare just announced today that they are joining NextDoor to build out the recommendation system.

From their email this morning:

In pursuit of our mission--to build the absolute best way for you to find recommendations for trusted local services--our team has joined forces with the neighborhood social network, Nextdoor. We are wildly thrilled about this and hope you will be, too.

So you may be wondering…..

Why is this good for me? You will get an even more robust and well-supported way to give and get local recommendations. By combining our GemShare expertise with Nextdoor’s team of over 100 super-smart people, all deeply committed to building the most useful local platform ever, we are building you something amazing--and not just on iOS.

What should I do next? If you are not already a member of Nextdoor, we hope you will join up and give it a spin (over 35% of US neighborhoods already have!). You’ll be able to use it for everything from sharing neighborhood recommendations and events, to posting classifieds, to keeping your neighborhood safe and sound.

What will happen to GemShare? GemShare will continue operating for the next little while as Nextdoor works on developing its recommendations capabilities. When we feel the time is right, we will offer you the option of moving your Gems to Nextdoor so that you can continue accessing them after we transition GemShare.

So what are you waiting for :-)

Click here to check out Nextdoor

Thank you all for the beautiful recommendations you have shared with each other using GemShare. It has been heartwarming and delightful to hear the many stories of people finding the perfect piano teacher, handyman, tailor, and so much more.

If you have any questions, please drop us a line.

Warmly and with gratitude, Maryam and Claudine

P.S. Here see these lovely examples of how people around the country are using Nextdoor to build vibrant, helpful neighborhoods every day.

EDIT: not sure why this was downvoted. The article refers to NextDoor's strategy being to build a local trusted recommendation system, and they just bought GemShare (a trusted recommendation system) to help with this.

It's popular in my neighborhood too.

I think the key thing they do is mail you a postcard with a code to validate your address, this ensures most of the people claiming to live in neighborhood XYZ actually live there.

I think they only do this based on some kind of risk analysis or something. I didn't have to do the postcard thing.

It depends. You can digitally invite someone as well and they don't require the post card because someone else is vouching for them.

In my neighborhood, the admins will post questions like "does anybody know Joe Smith from south 3rd street?" for anyone they can't confirm via property records.

That's because the system automatically sends the lead(s) an email anytime someone new from the neighborhood tries to join uninvited. If someone joins via personal referral, that isn't required.

I find interesting the way they've designed the site to build communities based on trust. Actually, it's something it's always been there. I don't know in the States but in Europe it's pretty common to see small villages in which its citizens know each other well, share their things or show up at someone's home without letting know previously...the kind of things you do when you trust your neighbours...

Even though I think sometimes we're trying to rediscover the wheel, I like the concept

Great company, full of integrity.

http://valleywag.gawker.com/nextdoor-ceo-sentenced-to-30-day...

Maybe they could use some of that money to add the ability to add photos in the replies of messages. We get a ton of new threads just so someone can post a photo in response to a different thread.

WAY overvalued. This app is fucking basic.

How basic or advanced your app is doesn't matter. All that matters is that it does something people find useful, valuable and/or fun.

I use this a lot!

Meh.

I don't use this at all.

My parents, on the other hand, are on it all the time.

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