NextDoor raises $110M at a $1.1B valuation

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.<p>It&#x27;s really helpful. I just wish the mobile app worked better.

I joined this a few years back and at first it seemed like a really nice concept. Two things turned me off to it:<p>1) Way too much email. There is no weekly digest so you are either going to get daily emails for the different categories&#x2F;types of notifications or none at all. I got sick of all the email and unsubscribed.<p>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 &quot;suspicious black teenager seen on X street&quot; 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.

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&#x27;s not way to create a micro-neighborhood where messages only go to other folks in the micro-community (unless they&#x27;ve recently added that feature). When I look at my defined neighborhood now I&#x27;m not even sure how they chose the boundaries. It doesn&#x27;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.

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.<p>Only 1 other person with a profile photo in my building (Out of ~500 adults). The entire &#x27;hood (5,000-10,000 people) only has 51 people registered (16 with a profile photo) and no updates since January.

I was using this early on and it&#x27;s fantastic. We have 85&#x2F;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&#x27;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&#x2F;giving recommendations for home services, and 2) a discussion forum for local crime problems. It&#x27;s also a local events message board of sorts.<p>If they got enough penetration in neighborhoods, they could potentially compete with craigslist&#x27;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.<p>This is the primary mechanism by which I communicate with my neighbors, organize neigborhood events, etc.

How&#x27;s this different from Patch and EveryBlock, both having demonstrated how to fail at monetizing &quot;local news&quot; communities?<p>It seems like crime data is the only real data of local interest&#x2F;inbound traffic.

I was the founder for my neighborhood and am still a lead. I had high hopes going in, but I suppose it&#x27;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&#x27;t be bothered to adopt yet another network&#x2F;app just for this purpose. I&#x27;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&#x27;t be overstated, especially when the perceived value is so low. Nextdoor, while fairly pretty, is low on features. It&#x27;s essentially only an activity stream. Compared to alternatives like <a href="http://www.i-neighbors.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.i-neighbors.org</a>, Nextdoor has nothing.<p>There are some things I&#x27;ve been very happy with:<p>1) There are a couple of police officers in the network around my neighborhood and they are terrific about informing and advising on crime &amp; public safety matters. 2) For anyone a little leery of Craigslist or Freecycle, selling &amp; 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&#x27;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&#x27;s List.

It&#x27;s popular in our community and remains to be the sole community-based web presence for the HOA here, it&#x27;s valuable to me at least.

Surprising how much money they&#x27;ve raised, since most of the content I see in my neighborhood is similar to craigslist.<p>Mostly they send a ton of email.

GemShare just announced today that they are joining NextDoor to build out the recommendation system.<p>From their email this morning:<p>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.<p>So you may be wondering…..<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>So what are you waiting for :-)<p>Click here to check out Nextdoor<p>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.<p>If you have any questions, please drop us a line.<p>Warmly and with gratitude, Maryam and Claudine<p>P.S. Here see these lovely examples of how people around the country are using Nextdoor to build vibrant, helpful neighborhoods every day.<p>EDIT: not sure why this was downvoted. The article refers to NextDoor&#x27;s strategy being to build a local trusted recommendation system, and they just bought GemShare (a trusted recommendation system) to help with this.

It&#x27;s popular in my neighborhood too.<p>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 find interesting the way they&#x27;ve designed the site to build communities based on trust. Actually, it&#x27;s something it&#x27;s always been there. I don&#x27;t know in the States but in Europe it&#x27;s pretty common to see small villages in which its citizens know each other well, share their things or show up at someone&#x27;s home without letting know previously...the kind of things you do when you trust your neighbours...<p>Even though I think sometimes we&#x27;re trying to rediscover the wheel, I like the concept

Great company, full of integrity.<p><a href="http://valleywag.gawker.com/nextdoor-ceo-sentenced-to-30-days-in-jail-for-hit-and-r-1590612892" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;valleywag.gawker.com&#x2F;nextdoor-ceo-sentenced-to-30-day...</a>

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.

I use this a lot!

Meh.

I don&#x27;t use this at all.<p>My <i>parents</i>, on the other hand, are on it all the time.