Nextdoor is a social network service founded and headquartered in San Francisco, but with the unique characteristic of only being accessible to people who live in very local neighborhoods. For more information about Nexdoor in general, go to their website.
If you would like to be part of your local online social community, go to the Nextdoor website and signup! You will be asked information validating your location to insure that you are, indeed, a resident of your neighborhood before you are allowed to join that particular Nextdoor site. If your neighborhood does not yet have a Nextdoor presence, you could be asked if you’d like to start one! There are existing Nextdoor entities for many of our neighborhoods, including Nextdoor Glenwood, Nextdoor Loch Lomond, Nextdoor Villa Real and many others.
Some Hints on Getting the Most from your “Nextdoor Neighborhood”
Each person has their own expectations as to the level of “interaction” they would like to have with any social network, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Nextdoor as well as their expectation of privacy.
On the privacy issue, Nextdoor is unique. It is very private in the sense that only verified residents of your neighborhood can join, interact with other members or see its contents. It is not private in that a member of a “Nextdoor Neighborhood” must be “visible” to all other members and sign in with their real name. After all, the purpose is for residents in your neighborhood to interact with each other – as neighbors. Think of a “Nextdoor Neighborhood” as the social, interactive other side of this website. It is voluntary and it is your choice as to whether you join or not (your choice provided you live in that neighborhood, of course).
On the interaction issue, each member of a “Nextdoor Neighborhood” can choose what level of involvement they wish, and that is very, very important. To that end, the very first thing you should do after signing up and logging in is to go to the Settings menu and configure your use of your “Nextdoor Neighborhood” to fit your taste.
Settings Menu
- Click on your name in the upper right corner and then select Settings from the drop down menu.
- You will see four items along the top row: ACCOUNT, EMAIL, MOBILE ALERTS, NEARBY NEIGHBORHOODS and PRIVACY
- Click on each of these items to set your preferences related to that item.
- ACCOUNT: Here you can set your email address, change your password, or if you decide not to continue in Nextdoor, you can deactivate your account.
- EMAIL: This is probably the most important item as it determines how often you receive emails when neighbors post something on Nextdoor. You will see that you can choose from immediate updates to daily digests to no email at all for several categories of posts and other items.
- MOBILE ALERTS: This allows you to provide your cell phone number if you would like to receive text messages during city and county emergencies.
- NEARBY NEIGHBORHOODS: Nextdoor allows you to opt into participating to a limited degree in the posts from nearby Nextdoor social networks. Nearby Nextdoor networks are those that are in very close proximity to yours. In this setting, you can opt in or out of participating in each of the nearby Nextdoor networks that are listed.
- PRIVACY: You can tailor what information your neighbors can see about you from your profile.
One other item you will see in the drop down menu when you click on your name is “Your profile”. This is where you can more fully describe yourself to your neighbors. It is not visible outside of the your “Nextdoor Neighborhood” social network. It is not visible to other Nextdoor networks, including your neighboring ones (Nearby Neighborhoods).
So, now that you have all this information, please give Nextdoor a try.