Nextdoor.com

I’m having fun connecting my neighbors with a newish site called Nextdoor.com. It’s an idea lots of folks have, and many neighborhoods have email lists or Facebook pages to share neighborhood news. A while back I was thinking of setting up a membership site on WordPress and inviting my neighbors to join. I even thought I might set it up so that I could expand to other neighborhoods in the city. Well, Nextdoor.com beat me to it.

The site sets up private networks for neighborhoods so that your information isn’t open to the WWW unless you want it to be. You can send messages to just your neighborhood or to neighborhoods bordering your own. It’s got a fun map where you can see where your neighbors live and you can invite others via email or flyers and stuff you can print out. So far I’ve gotten 53 invitations accepted.

You can share general news, lost and found, for sale, and crime reports as well as private message your neighbors. There is also a mobile app available.

I attended a webinar a few weeks ago from Nextdoor.com on how to run a successful neighborhood site. Someone asked a question that I was wondering about – how are they making money off of this? There is no advertising on the site so far, except from local folks. The person running the webinar admitted that so far they are living on venture capital money, so we’ll see how long it lasts.

Maybe I’ll have to resurrect my idea afterall.