
The Anti-Facebook - fourstar
http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/18/6030393/nextdoor-private-social-network-40000-neighborhoods
======
shazow
I am part of a Nextdoor neighbourhood in a Bay Area suburb with 302 neighbours
(216 of 423 households). It's very handy.

The thing that surprised me most is how publicly abrasive people can be when
they're using their Real Names with real photos and real descriptions of their
children and pets just a click away, talking to people who live just down the
street.

There's a big hubbub in my 'hood about some homeowners who want to rebuild our
community pool, a multi-million dollar project. Vast majority of the
neighbourhood doesn't care one way or the other, but they don't want their HOA
fees to increase.

Had it not been for Nextdoor, the loud minority would have quietly passed the
bill and started construction because nobody attends the community meetings or
bothered to vote. Except, Nextdoor started taking off in our area just at the
right time and a bunch of people flipped out when they found out about this
through various threads on Nextdoor.

There was namecalling, sarcasm, pedantry, even classic trolling (people taking
positions that they clearly don't care about just to upset the original
poster). Almost Youtube-comment level stuff. Even weirder, most of our
neighbours are middle-aged or older. They didn't grow up with this kind of
online behaviour and had trouble recognizing it.

Clearly the behaviour of these people is not Nextdoor's fault. I am grateful
that Nextdoor is there partly for passively observing the drama in my
community and partly for actually feeling like I'm getting to know the people
I run into when I walk my dog.

Coming away from working at Google during the peak of the Real Name
controversy, it's weird to see the benefit premise explicitly shaken, if not
refuted.

~~~
jonnathanson
I signed up, and invited all the neighbors I knew, in large part because I
have an out-of-control HOA. They purposely schedule meetings on short notice,
typically when they know everyone's at work (2pm on a Tuesday, for example).
Then they pass all sorts of pet projects, spending resolutions, "house rules"
(don't even get me started on that nonsense), and so forth. Time will tell if
peer pressure and transparency are effective antidotes to the petty tyranny of
my HOA. But I'm all for anything that can theoretically check their influence.

So far my neighborhood is pretty quiet. About 50-odd users. It's entertaining,
though. There's this one guy who posts weird survivalist rants and doomsday
scenarios about The Big One, and how we're not sufficiently prepared for it.
(Probably true, I hate to say.) There's a woman breeding puppies in her
apartment and offering them for sale. There's a guy using the site to promote
his political blog. There's a guy playing True Detective, tracking all of the
car break-ins in the neighborhood, and looking for a "pattern" and "the perp's
signature" in the items left on the scenes. I kind of dig it all. Seeing the
eccentricity on display adds a smidgeon of big-city atmosphere that I've
always felt SF was lacking in comparison to other cities I've lived in.

I hope the network comes into its own, and that we get more people in my
neighborhood on board. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the strangeness of my
early adopter cohort.

~~~
satori99
Can I ask what a HOA is for and what it does? I don't think they exist in my
country. We have body corporate entities for strata title blocks, but
freestanding houses pay rates to local government directly for services.

Does a HOA provide garbage removal, street maintenance, etc?

~~~
jonnathanson
The nominal answer is that HOAs are membership associations to which owners in
a condo building or neighborhood are sometimes obligated to join. The
homeowners pool dues every month to cover things like garbage collection,
building maintenance, etc. The HOA also acts as a governing body over the
building's residents, and is free to impose any number of rules and
restrictions on usage, design, etc., in anything defined as a "common area"
(chiefly, any part of the building that is outside the airspace of the condo
interiors). Some HOAs set additional restrictions on what you can do inside
your condo, provided that activity, construction, design, etc., affects the
neighboring units in any way. Above and beyond their common-area
jurisdictions, many HOAs are free to establish "house rules," which are
arbitrary and binding restrictions on just about anything that the HOA board
happens to dislike.

The cynical answer is that HOAs are legal fictions set up to shelter building
developers from the financial burdens and liabilities of having to pay for, or
be on the hook for, any of those services or maintenance needs. HOAs are the
greatest invention in favor of real estate developers since the timeshare.

~~~
antihero
So do you rent the buildings from the HOA? Or do you own them? And surely if
you own them, they have no legal right to tell you want to do unless it breaks
the law?

~~~
blueskin_
As I understand it, it can be either case. Not sure how they can screw you
around if you own it, probably some obscure law, but it's obvious enough if
you're renting from them.

~~~
jonnathanson
They can screw you around pretty easily and legally, even if you are an owner.
They levy fines for noncompliance, and if you don't pay the fines and comply,
they can put liens on your property -- even if you own the property outright.
It's all part of the contract you enter into upon purchasing the property.
Membership in the HOA is compulsory in many cases, and your purchase of the
property comes with the obligation to join the HOA and be subject to its
Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs).

So why in the hell would you sign that sort of deal in the first place? Well,
if you don't have to, you shouldn't. But in some cities, such as SF, it's
extremely hard to buy a condo that doesn't come with an HOA.

HOAs are as prevalent as they are because in most cases they are highly
beneficial, both legally and financially, to building or subdivision
developers. So more and more developers are using them.

------
idlewords
To really be an anti-Facebook, this service would need to be decentralized.
And it's a perfect example of a service that _should_ be decentralized by
design. There's no earthly reason to have this live on one server somewhere,
except if you want to track people and show them ads.

~~~
gioele
You mean "federated" (each node has its set of data and controls what to share
with the others upon request) more than "decentralized" (there is single set
of data that is replicated and handled by multiple nodes, each of which may
have all the data or part of it).

~~~
sdrothrock
I've never heard of that term before... is there a good resource for reading
up on federated servers/networks/design (I'm not even sure which of those
three terms is the most appropriate here).

~~~
mattlutze
The StackExchange network is an example of federation. All of the various
sites have unique userbases and data sets, with a system for authorizing and
trusting a user's identity between the lot of them.

Otherwise,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_%28information_techn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_%28information_technology%29)
for a general discussion.

------
sytelus
Slack is killing emails.

Nextdoor is killing Facebook.

Verge is killing journalism or what's left of it.

In reality Slack had only 150K users. Nextdoor is barely known outside of few
neighbourhoods (sure, they can claim 1 in every 4 neighbourhood has "adopted"
Nextdoor). Lot of articles from Verge getting posted here recently smells a
lot like just paid PR stuff for startups. They are almost like informatials on
late night TV. Take everything from them with huge pinch of salt.

~~~
govindkabra31
that is how it begins.. early signs of FB was _killing_ MySpace was back when
it was a thing that kids in a handful of colleges used. These early signs are
important to recognize and highlight for incumbents as well as participants.

------
chaostheory
This is a nice submarine ad.

This would be great if people were more active on NextDoor. I haven't seen too
many neighborhoods in the Bay Area where it works beyond 4-5 active people.

~~~
malandrew
This is what I thought too. There is nothing described in the article that
can't be accomplished with a closed group on Facebook, which we use for our
apartment building in San Francisco.

The main feature I wouldn't mind having, if NextDoor has it, is a way to share
tools and other things that I have with my neighbors. For example, I have some
power tools, excellent specialized cooking gear, commercial juice press, bike
repair stand, etc. and plan on buy a commercial vacuum sealer. All of these
things are capital goods that are extremely useful but might spend a lot of
their time used infrequently. Since these are going to be available to use a
lot of the time I'm happy to lend them to a neighbor so long as I know they
are going to come back to me in the same condition as they were lent. I just
want a system where I can write down my expectations insofar as how I expect
my things to be cared for and cleaned before returned, and how I can remedy
issues and leave feedback like "3-stars b/c my stock pot came back dirty" or
"5 stars b/c my stock pot came back cleaner than it was when I leant it".

~~~
chaostheory
To be fair Next door shows where people live in relation to you, which is a
little better than just a disembodied bunch of facebook contacts.

------
debt
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.

~~~
onedev
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.

~~~
debt
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.

~~~
secabeen
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.

~~~
Rapzid
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.

------
thrownaway2424
FFS. Their site says "Login with Facebook" so I try. Apparently all this does
is give them access to your Facebook profile, it doesn't actually give you an
account on Nextdoor. You still have to provide your email address and
establish a password.

In other words, even their signup page contains a scam, designed to steal your
friends list. And I'm supposed to trust this site with anything? Fuck no.

~~~
onedev
The FB access is just for authentication and easy login as well as profile
picture. In no way does the website have access to your friends list....

I think your definition of scam is a bit off...because every app in the app
store would be qualified as a "scam".

~~~
thrownaway2424
When a Facebook connected app or site has access to "your profile" that
includes your friends list.

Anyway as I can see that you failed to read for comprehension I must reiterate
that allowing next-door to read your Facebook profile in no way authenticates
you to the site, nor does it provide them with your profile picture.

~~~
mynewwork
Slight correction - it has access to your friends who have also used the
facebook login for that site.

If you're the first person to login, the site will get an empty list. Only the
set of your friends who have previously used the service, will show up if the
service queries fb for your friends.

------
eitally
I am the "neighborhood lead" for Nextdoor in my neighborhood and I have found
it incredibly useful, for a number of reasons: meeting neighbors, unloading
free/cheap stuff I don't want to put on Craigslist or Freecycle, learning
about neighborhood problems & news (vandalism, construction, permits, etc),
finding and vetting service providers (plumbers, landscapers, electricians,
etc), and generally staying in touch with people I live near. This is hugely
more valuable than the crap I see on Facebook. Nobody posts ice bucket
challenge videos on Nextdoor, or kid pics, or game invites. :)

~~~
jchendy
> Nobody posts ice bucket challenge videos on Nextdoor, or kid pics, or game
> invites. :)

I'm sure this is an exception, but I turned off email notifications when
people started discussing how to insulate their apartments to protect
themselves from wifi radiation.

~~~
joeframbach
I can get behind that. Not to protect _myself_ from wifi radiation, but to cut
down on the amount of wifi traffic interfering with my signal. There are only
13 usable channels in 2.4Ghz, and I don't feel like replacing my router for
5Ghz right away.

~~~
steve-howard
In the US, there are 11 channels, and either 3 or (with cooperation and
planning between neighbors) 4 non-overlapping channels. Investing in 5ghz was
the only way I could get a decent signal in my high-rise apartment.

------
tekni5
It would be cool if someone in the neighborhood could purchase a device that
would setup a local nextdoor type of service. It would show up as a wireless
connection, once connected when they try to visit a website it would give them
an explanation what this service offers and allow them to setup a profile.
Only people within a certain distance would be able to connect, the network
could be expanded with multiple devices. It would allow, decentralized
networking based on geographic location. Users would also be allowed to create
a backup of their profile and interactions for record keeping if they wish.

It could be very helpful for local discussion, community awareness, emergency
communication (if the access points are kept off the main grid) and possibly
even direct democratic voting for small local issues.

Sort of like a PirateBox, but more sophisticated non-anonymous local private
social network. Not entirely sure if the technology exists to allow this to
scale affordably to at least a block or two.

~~~
jrbaldwin
You're basically describing [http://tidepools.co](http://tidepools.co)

which was created as a localized discussion and mapping platform that runs on
wireless mesh networks (or any server setup)

------
AustinDev
This is a cool and much needed social network however it appears signup is
broken at the moment. I tried 2-3 times to make it through the signup page and
couldn't do it with either Facebook or Email signup.

Having your user registration broken when you get a positive article published
about your service must really suck.

EDIT: Seems to be a chrome issue. Submitted a request to their support time.
Safari seems to work just fine.

~~~
arbitrage
So, first of all, my neighbourhood name in their map is kinda offensive (a
local colloquialism). Second, to complete the registration process, I have to
either supply a debit/credit card, the will call a phone number and somehow
compare that against phone records to verify my identity, or send me a
postcard.

This seems incredibly intrusive and a big privacy ingress. No thanks.

~~~
onedev
> Second, to complete the registration process, I have to either supply a
> debit/credit card, the will call a phone number and somehow compare that
> against phone records to verify my identity, or send me a postcard.

This is actually a HUGE piece of what makes the social network special. This
builds inherent trust into the network so you actually know that the people
that you're talking to are actually who they say they are and actually live in
your neighborhood.

This means that, if you're selling your couch, or buying something from a
neighbor, you can be sure that it's trusted neighbor that you're interacting
with.

This actually HELPS privacy rather than impeding it.

Nextdoor also cross references with sex offender databases as well as "some"
criminal databases so that they are banned from joining. It's also a safety
feature.

~~~
comex
> Nextdoor also cross references with sex offender databases as well as "some"
> criminal databases so that they are banned from joining. It's also a safety
> feature.

Ugh. Those things increase recidivism and violate fundamental concepts of
justice by not allowing people to ever 'serve their debt to society'. If I can
pass someone by on the sidewalk or walk by their house, I don't see why they
should be banned from talking to me on such a network.

~~~
Byzantine
Assuming those people are actual, proven, and unanimously agreed upon sex
offenders, such as a 50 year old man who did time for making 10 year year old
boys perform fellatio on him, I don't see what is wrong with making them
pariahs. If anything, they should have been executed rather than reintroduced
into society.

~~~
lilsunnybee
Hmm, except that the sex offender registry is also absurdly broad. Should
public urination result in you being a life-long pariah? What about being an
underage teen sexting?

[http://www.businessinsider.com/surprising-things-that-
could-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/surprising-things-that-could-make-
you-a-sex-offender-2013-10)

------
rozza
For folks in the UK theres [http://streetlife.com](http://streetlife.com)
which also is a local social network.

You can verify your address to prove you are local and subscribe to local area
conversations and news etc... Just like in life the communities are mixed -
some more involved than others but I've found it a great resource so far.

------
johnchristopher
Being in Europe I wished I could have a peek at what's inside. I wished I
could set up an account and see what happens and if my neighbors would sign-
up. I suppose it's not possible (yet) because of i18n, targeted/local ads and
public announcements particularities ?

Any open-source alternative I could set up ? A small diaspora/facebook clone ?

~~~
namenotrequired
If you're interested, Peerby is something similar which is open in many parts
of Europe right now.

[https://peerby.com/](https://peerby.com/)

~~~
johnchristopher
Thank you. Don't know why you're being downvoted so I refilled your karma.

------
halcyondaze
I had this idea a while back and I'm glad that Nextdoor is dominating it.
Growing up on a double cul-de-sac, I'd say I was fortunate enough to have a
close neighborhood just by virtue of the shape of the street, but for people
that didn't have that this seems like a really awesome service.

~~~
raldi
What's a double cul-de-sac?

~~~
personlurking
I would guess it's a 'street' whose only outlet is halfway point, while both
ends are cul-de-sacs (more or less the shape of a letter T, with the ends of
the top part being the cul-de-sacs and the lower part giving access to other
streets, etc).

------
spingsprong
What happens if somebody wants to join, but the Leads refuse?

If a small minority of Leads can prevent people they don't like from joining,
it seems like it risks reinforcing bigotry and intolerance.

~~~
krawczstef
Leads don't get that power. They can only flag members to our support team who
will investigate; they can't stop someone from joining. [disclaimer: I work at
Nextdoor]

------
junto
They talk at the end of the article about monetisation. This kind of network
really has the possibility of disrupting Craig Craigslist. Proof of identity
and local neighbours would hopefully reduce the kind of scams you see on
craigslist.

------
k-mcgrady
Serious question: is this something that would be popular in the US? I could
never see anyone in my neighbourhood using a private/local social network.
Interested to hear from people who think this would be popular in their
country.

~~~
namenotrequired
I think so! I work for [https://peerby.com](https://peerby.com) , which does
something similar (but more narrow, only for borrowing things from neighbors),
which started in the Netherlands but it's picking up rather quickly in the US
now as well - I think we have many more members in the US now than in some
countries where we tried much harder.

------
sdm
I'm really confused why someone would _want_ to know their neighbours. I don't
know my neighbours but even if I did, I wouldn't want to be sharing with them
on an online network. I like my anonymity and privacy.

------
ajaymehta
I'm glad to see Nextdoor getting this kind of recognition. I've moved around
the Bay Area several times in the last few years, and every new Nextdoor
community I've joined has been very active and helpful (I bought furniture,
found out about a block party, and much more). Highly recommend joining.

~~~
jmhain
I just moved to the bay area, but unfortunately there is no life in my
NextDoor community. I actually found it by coming up with the concept and
googling to see if anything like it actually existed. I was hoping to make
some new friends, but oh well.

------
amwelles
I loved using Nextdoor in my last neighborhood. I found a dog walker, got some
free yarn, and had a better sense of who my neighbors were. I don't have the
time to dedicate to being a neighborhood leader, though, so I haven't set one
up in my new neighborhood.

------
govindkabra31
My favorite nextdoor story is when it helped neighbors find _chicken poop_
[https://twitter.com/kabragovind/status/483721368710963200](https://twitter.com/kabragovind/status/483721368710963200)

------
NathanCH
Can someone provide me an inside look at Nextdoor? I'm not an American but
want to use the website as inspiration for a personal project, but as you
know, I can't get passed the sign up process.

I'm curious about features and UI implementation. Thanks

------
jfb
¼ "American neighborhoods"? That seems like a bit of a reach.

------
lilsunnybee
Oh wow could this be any more transparently a PR fluff piece? This doesn't
reflect well on The Verge at all as far as any sort of journalistic integrity
goes.

------
Mahn
Wasn't there a similar service that shut down because it couldn't get traction
a few years ago? I remember seeing it here in HN.

------
leef
Seems a bit difficult to be the anti-Facebook when the very first screen
presents a login with Facebook button.

------
namenotrequired
We're trying to do something similar but a bit more narrow at
[https://peerby.com/](https://peerby.com/) . It's specifically for items you
want to borrow. We're based in Europe but the SF community is picking up
pretty well right now.

------
jokoon
Finally, I was thinking about this too: only allowing to show neighbors who
are in your area instead. Maybe you need some mechanism to forbid users to
quickly change area, or make it hard to create multiple account to watch
several areas. That would be quite a big bump for privacy.

------
ggiaco
Wonder if any thoughts on Spiral (sprlr.com) as an alternative based on
location instead of proof of residence - so you could always connect to the
community around you, even if you move around. Can work for work settings,
colleges, events, etc.

FD: I'm involved with Spiral.

------
Vanayad
"40,000 neighborhoods, or roughly one in four American communities, with 10 or
more active users"

Found it funny as hell.

------
TheMagicHorsey
I don't know about other neighborhoods, but Nextdoor in SOMA is pretty piss
poor in terms of content.

~~~
krawczstef
you mean nothing that interests you? or there isn't much? or? [disclaimer: I
work for Nextdoor]

~~~
TheMagicHorsey
Hardly any posts. Nothing that interests me.

------
morgante
From the looks of it, Nextdoor is very similar to Front Porch Forum, except
FPM has been around for almost a decade but exists only in Vermont. While
occasionally useful, it inevitably reminds me that there's a reason the
Internet took off in the first place: I have very little in common with my
neighbors besides geographical proximity.

------
ausjke
I don't use Facebook, and I use Nextdoor all the time and it seems very useful
to me.

------
Kiro
How are neighbourhoods defined? What are the areas based on?

------
Zikes
OT: I'd like to take a moment to appreciate The Verge for making the first
mention of Nextdoor in the article a link, and for making that link actually
go to the Nextdoor web site instead of a silly "here's what The Verge has to
say about the company Nextdoor" page.

