neighborhoods, including more than 90 percent of those in the 25 largest cities-are becoming representative of the country’s actual populations. Nextdoor’s virtual communities-which cover more than 180,000 U.S. Thanks to its popularity, the service offers a unique window into daily life around the country.
Not just the postman and the barber, but also the aspiring belly dancer, the night clipper, the cat looser, and all the rest. Like it or not, these are the people in your neighborhood-the people that you meet each day, as the old Sesame Street song goes. You can “mute” neighbors on Nextdoor to hide their posts, but you can’t make them move away. Which means the community you enter is not imagined or diasporic, comprising people from the same school, profession, or interest group-it’s physical. More important, in order to join, you have to prove that you live where you say you do (by entering a code mailed to your home address, for example). Nextdoor works a lot like Facebook, but instead of a “Like” button, it offers a “Thank” button, encouraging a kind of neighborly grace. But it can also foster connections among neighbors and help counter the social isolation brought about by technology. If Twitter is where you fight with strangers, and Facebook is where you vie with friends, then Nextdoor is where you get annoyed with neighbors-for sending “urgent alerts,” pushed late at night to mobile phones, about questionable emergencies for trying to sell a tattered massage table or used carpet shampooer at near-retail price for issuing nasty reprisals on matters large and small. Social networks connect people, but many of those connections degrade into vitriol. On its website and app, people can post recommendations, updates, and warnings about their building, block, or neighborhood.Īnyone who has subscribed to a neighborhood email listserv-or used the internet-can guess what might go wrong. All of this news came courtesy of the social-media service Nextdoor. Here are some of the things I heard about in my neighborhood over the past year: A thunderstorm downed a tree, blocking a central road a shadowy agent called “the night clipper” arose, surreptitiously cutting overhanging bushes while unsuspecting property owners slept several dogs and cats were lost, found, or “on the loose,” whatever that means for a cat a federal-grand-jury-summons telephone scam struck someone sought belly-dancing classes, an apparent alternative to Pilates and, innumerable times, people deposited bags of dog poop into lawn-clipping and recycling canisters at the curb.
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