Martha Wickelhaus’ son was ill, and his 19-month-old Labrador, Frankie, needed a temporary home. Wickelhaus didn’t post a plea for a foster home on Facebook, Craigslist or Twitter. Instead, her message on Nextdoor.com went straight to her neighbors and her landlord, and, from there, to Furry Friends Network.
“Frankie is now, for a few months, living in a great home with a big yard and a 6-year-old child,” Wickelhaus said with satisfaction.
Wickelhaus, of Midtown Harrisburg, has joined the growing legion of midstate residents on Nextdoor.com, the 21st-century version of over-the-back-fence conversations. While Harrisburg’s rollout so far has been largely in the city’s more affluent river neighborhoods and near suburbs, some Allison Hill residents also hope soon to capitalize on the power of neighborly social media.
Founded in San Francisco in 2010, Nextdoor.com is billed as “the private social network for neighborhoods.” It’s the cyber-place where neighbors do neighborly things—seek help, offer help, solve problems, promote block parties, get to know each other. In a carefully prescribed process, organizers draw neighborhood lines that make geographic and cultural sense. When 10 members enroll, a Nextdoor.com group is launched. It’s now in 41,000 U.S. neighborhoods.
Harrisburg has 18 Nextdoor groups within its boundaries and nearby, with such familiar names as Old Fox Ridge and Uptown-Italian Lake. Wickelhaus, a member of the Olde Uptown group, used Nextdoor to start a knitting group—Stitch ‘n Bitch, they call themselves—that meets at Little Amps Coffee Roasters or Midtown Cinema. In addition to finding a foster home for Frankie the dog, she once found a place to recycle cardboard boxes stacked in her basement from a recent move.
Users love the simplicity and targeted messaging of Nextdoor.com, which issues daily e-mails with new posts. With its laser focus on issues of interest neighborhood by neighborhood, there’s “nothing frivolous” to wade through, said Wickelhaus.
“I open it up to see if there’s anything I’m interested in,” she said. “If there is, I go and read more about it.”
Mitch Smith started the Engleton group, now up to 296 members, in late 2011. Unlike a Web page that needed constant upkeep, or even Facebook, Nextdoor is almost self-sustaining, Smith said. At first, some members used the group to complain, but the site has “transformed” into an idea-sharing space where neighbors find home maintenance help, post found or lost pets, and sell, buy or give away their stuff.
“We had issues in the beginning of people attacking other people over stupid stuff, but we’ve weeded them out,” said Smith. “’So-and-so parked wrong.’ Ridiculous. Or, ‘So-and-so didn’t shovel their sidewalk.’ Give me a break. There’s much bigger fish to fry in the city.”
Unlike some online forums, Nextdoor requires that members be identified by name and their addresses be verified.
“When people can be anonymous, they can be pretty disrespectful,” Nextdoor.com Head of Communications Kelsey Grady told TheBurg. “We don’t see that often on Nextdoor.”
Of course, a popular social media platform is sure to get the attention of governments and businesses seeking new communications outlets. Nextdoor.com currently partners with 240 cities and agencies, including police departments, which can broadcast notices without getting access to individual groups or their members. A partnership with Harrisburg is “in the works,” said Communications Manager Jen Burke.
Businesspeople often use Nextdoor for relationship building—think of the realtor keeping in touch around town—but, if they “get too self-promotional, people let them know,” said Grady.
Since neighborhood lines and interests rarely fall into neat alignment, Nextdoor members can also communicate with nearby groups. The Harrisburg Downtown Improvement District uses Nextdoor to promote events to a key audience—its Midtown-area neighbors.
“We’re a small nonprofit, so we’re not necessarily promoting on radio or TV,” said Marketing Director Leigh Ann Urban. “This is a great way to reach them more directly. Some people aren’t on Facebook.”
With its e-mail delivery system, Nextdoor engages all age ranges, including 90-year-olds who use e-mail to contact the grandkids, said Grady. And Nextdoor is working in diverse communities, she said.
“We’re doing really well in the South Side of Chicago, the 9th Ward of New Orleans, very rural areas,” she said. “We’re seeing it work everywhere, and our goal as a company is to see it work in every neighborhood in the U.S.”
In Harrisburg’s multi-ethnic Allison Hill neighborhood, some residents have approached Tri County Community Action about starting a Nextdoor group. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the “digital divide,” as measured by desktop computers owned by white Americans compared to African Americans and Latinos, is almost nonexistent in smartphone ownership. Fortunately, Nextdoor.com has an app for that.
“It’s much easier for this community to access the Internet because of smartphones than desktops,” said Tri-County Communications Manager Lisa Landis.
DID’s Urban appreciates Nextdoor’s clutter-free message delivery.
“It’s not something that’s overwhelming, and it’s simple to use,” she said. “Whoever came up with it—genius.”
