

NextDoor raises $110M at a $1.1B valuation - nikunjk
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/technology/nextdoor-a-start-up-social-network-digs-deep-into-neighborhoods.html?_r=1&referrer=

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BinaryIdiot
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.

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

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sgwealti
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.

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bagacrap
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.

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

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vijayboyapati
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.

~~~
lloydde
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.

~~~
ddlatham
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.

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

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jim_greco
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.

~~~
testingonprod
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.

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shanselman
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.

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yessql
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.

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danans
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.

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hayksaakian
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.

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spydum
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

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jkestner
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.

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

~~~
soMeta
So, so meta.

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mslate
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.

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mooreds
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.

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hayksaakian
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.

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raldi
Um, do you have a citation for that?

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

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raldi
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...](https://help.nextdoor.com/customer/portal/articles/1287247-how-
the-amazon-promotion-works)

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eitally
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](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.

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ausjke
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.

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hberg
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.

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jaredsohn
>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.

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trounce
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.

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jasondc
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.

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thrownaway2424
I think they only do this based on some kind of risk analysis or something. I
didn't have to do the postcard thing.

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

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lotharbot
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.

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eitally
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.

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phesse14
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

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MyNameIsMK
Great company, full of integrity.

[http://valleywag.gawker.com/nextdoor-ceo-sentenced-
to-30-day...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/nextdoor-ceo-sentenced-to-30-days-
in-jail-for-hit-and-r-1590612892)

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SystemOut
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.

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bsmartt
WAY overvalued. This app is fucking basic.

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dagw
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.

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confiscate
I use this a lot!

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free2rhyme214
Meh.

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dropit_sphere
I don't use this at all.

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

