User:BC1278/sandbox/Nextdoor

Comment: I have a started a discussion regarding this redraft at: Talk:Nextdoor

Nextdoor is a hyperlocal private social networking service for neighborhoods, available in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and France. Based in San Francisco, California, the service was launched in October 2011 in the United States, and became available in Europe starting in February 2016.

Platform


Before registering an account, prospective users must provide their real name and verify their home address. Verification methods include providing a credit card or confirming a code mailed or phoned to the prospective user. Nextdoor provides registered users with a list of neighbors who have also registered. Nextdoor allows users to see which nearby residents are registered on the site, and to send postcards advertising the site to non-registered neighbors.

Nextdoor is organized into separate sites for different neighborhoods. A map for each community enables members to see which of their neighbors have joined.

Members can post messages about their neighborhood, such as local service provider recommendations, real estate issues, and crime and safety updates. Local police departments are allowed to post notices in neighborhoods, such as closed roads, a spike in burglaries, warnings about a suspect or requests for help solving a crime. Platform features include tools for organizing events; official city government pages to make announcements and answer questions; and real estate listings.

The platform is in use by about 3000 public agencies to provide voting and community information.

History
The company started out in 2008 as Fanbase, a social network for sports fans, pivoting to become Nextdoor in the summer of 2010. The Nextdoor founding team was Nirav Tolia, Sarah Leary, Prakash Janakiraman and David Wiesen. Tolia, who became CEO, had previously helped start Epinions.

Nextdoor had 80 to 100 employees and had hired Dan Clancy (formerly of Google) as VP of engineering.

It introduced advertising in 2017, its first efforts at monetization. Advertising includes posts inside of user's feeds about business services and products. CEO Toila said the company brought in several million dollars in ad revenue in 2017.

The platform introduced paid real estate advertising in 2017. Agents and brokers are able to create pages for their business. When a member searches for homes in a neighborhood's real estate section, the agents can pay for their business pages to show up. They can also pay to sponsor a neighborhood section.

Nextdoor has been reported to have been in wide use by neighbors during natural disasters such as Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma, as well as public crisis, such as the string of bombings in Austin, Texas.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency has access to the platform to provide emergency alerts about natural disasters, such as flooding, hurricanes and major snowstorms. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also sends out emergency hyperlocal weather alerts via the platform.

Nextdoor started to be used in March 2018 by the state of California to send out election-related information, such as polling station locations.

U.S. growth
By 2014, the company said about 25% of American neighborhoods were represented on Nextdoor. By 2017, the company said that about 75% of U.S. neighborhoods were signed up on Nextdoor. It was active in about 170,000 communities, as of April 2018. and each neighborhood had an average of 1,200 households as members.

U.K.
In February 2017, Nextdoor acquired the UK local social network service Streetlife, in a "multimillion pound deal." Nextdoor's use of full name and address directories within neighborhood sites led to anger amongst some former Streetlife users, accustomed to having only their first names revealed. Streetlife data had been searchable by Google and Nextdoor does not allow search engines to index the platform.

Racial profiling misuse and remediation efforts
In 2016, there were multiple complaints that some Nextdoor members were misusing the platform's neighborhood watch pages for racial profiling. Complaints in Oakland, California were particularly vehement following a report that included examples of racially-motivated posts about minorities walking dogs, driving cars or delivering mail. In response, Nextdoor adopted algorithms to identify racially biased language. And it said in August 2016 that it would further curb profiling by requiring suspicious activity reports to have substantially more information than race. The company reported posts with racial profiling were reduced by 75%. But in 2017, Nextdoor said that the platform changes would not entirely eliminate profiling in the app, so the platform would rely on local neighborhood leads (group moderators) to identify and report uncaught instances of profiling.

Finances
Nextdoor had raised $285 million in financing, as of December, 2017. A $75 million round announced that month put its valuation at $1.5 billion. The investor was not disclosed by the company. A German magazine said German media conglomerate Axel Springer SE became an investor in October 2017.

A previous round of $110 million in funding in 2015 valued Nextdoor at $1.1 billion. Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Insight Venture Partners are among the company's investors.

The company raised $60 million in 2013 and $18.6 million in 2012.