Nextdoor redesigns app with AI recommendations, local news, and real-time emergency alerts

Neighborhood social app Nextdoor is set to revolutionize its service with a major redesign, introducing what it terms the “new Nextdoor.” This overhaul integrates advanced features including AI-powered recommendations, comprehensive local news feeds, and critical real-time emergency alerts. The platform has also undergone a significant aesthetic update, presenting a more contemporary and user-friendly interface.

For 15 years, Nextdoor has served as a primary digital hub for neighborhood interactions, facilitating connections for everything from local plumber recommendations to dining suggestions. However, the platform faced challenges, including stalled growth and declining engagement, partly due to associations with misinformation and instances of racism on its feeds.

In a strategic move to revitalize its user base and enhance utility, Nextdoor aims to boost the quality and relevance of local information available on the platform, as articulated by Nextdoor CEO and co-founder Nirav Tolia. The goal is to make the service more helpful, useful, and timely for its community members.

A significant addition is the integration of local news through partnerships with 3,500 local publications across the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. This extensive network includes prominent outlets such as the San Francisco Standard, The London Standard, and The Toronto Star.

“The reason that this is so important for us is historically, Nextdoor has relied 100% on user-generated content, just the content that’s created by your neighbors,” Tolia explained. “That’s been a great source of information. But, to really make sure if it’s happening in your neighborhood, we need to bring in local news as well. So this is the first time we’re letting third party publishers use our distribution.”

Tolia clarified that these arrangements are non-commercial; Nextdoor neither pays for the content nor do publishers pay Nextdoor. The platform will not host the full articles but will display headlines, snippets, and images, directing traffic to the respective publications. Users will also have the ability to engage in discussions via a comments section under each news post.

Looking ahead, Tolia hinted that publishers are just the initial phase of new content integration, with plans to allow small businesses, schools, and various organizations to establish native presences within the app.

In terms of safety and preparedness, Nextdoor is rolling out real-time alerts for critical events such as weather phenomena, traffic disruptions, power outages, storms, and wildfires. These alerts will be dynamically displayed on a neighborhood map, fostering timely conversations among residents about safety measures and preparedness strategies. These vital alerts are powered through partnerships with Samdesk and Weather.com, which encompasses The Weather Channel app and Weather.com.

“When there’s something that is definitely worth paying attention to, we call that the yellow state, and we’ll put that alert right at the top,” Tolia stated. “When there’s something critical, we call that the red state and it’ll take over the whole app, because at that point, you don’t care about the conversations neighbors are having about pickleball. You don’t really care about the new restaurant review that the local publishers put in. You need to get together with your neighbors and help save each other’s lives in some cases.”

A key differentiator for Nextdoor’s alerts is their hyper-localized nature, enabled by the platform’s geospatial foundation. Unlike broader alerts like Amber Alerts, Nextdoor can precisely target notifications down to individual households. For instance, a power outage alert will only be dispatched to those directly affected.

The introduction of “Faves,” an AI-powered discovery feature, underscores Nextdoor’s commitment to hyper-local utility. Tolia emphasized that recommendations from trusted neighbors often surpass those found on general search engines or AI chatbots for local insights. “Faves” offers curated lists of recommendations and allows users to pose specific questions for tailored suggestions.

“We have an LLM for every neighborhood where we’ve taken 15 years of neighbor conversations and we can now answer questions about that information in a really compelling way,” Tolia elaborated. “So we have the first, as far as we know, the first truly local AI that’s powered by neighbor conversations.”

Users can inquire about specific local needs, such as “What is the best place to hike with kids?” and receive concise, summarized responses compiled from actual user posts on Nextdoor. Each summary is linked to the original posts for transparency and further detail.

“This content is proprietary to Nextdoor,” Tolia affirmed. “We’ve never shared it. It’s not indexed by Google. It’s not available on ChatGPT, and again, because we know where you live, we can target the information to you in the most relevant way.”

Tolia highlighted Nextdoor’s unique strength in digitizing and capturing localized word-of-mouth information – data that traditional platforms like Google or ChatGPT cannot provide. This includes niche information like neighborhood lemonade stands, which can only be gathered through direct community interaction.

“I give the funny example of, if you wanted to know all the lemonade stands that kids are operating in your neighborhood, you can’t go to Google Maps and find that,” Tolia said. “You can’t go to ChatGPT and ask that question, right? The only way is for you to ask your neighbors. And so that’s what Nextdoor is all about. So what are we going to do? We’re going to recommit to really making this feel hyperlocal. It’s really important for us to be seen less as a social network and more as a utility centric network.”