There she found a small army of others nearby who were also looking for ways to chip in. Weiland, posted her own offer to help on Nextdoor. The group quickly grew and now runs a digital call center and no-touch delivery service, with deliveries coordinated over Google Docs and Slack. Its most vital role may be in directing people to organizations and networks best suited to respond to needs as the city weighs guidelines for safely helping neighbors. The busybodies are still there, lecturing and occasionally yelling, somehow no more helpful than before, even in this golden opportunity for giving advice.īut Nextdoor was not built to be a disaster-relief platform. There are still relics of Nextdoor 1.0: complaints about discourteous runners, unverified rumors about what the city may do next and full-on conspiracy theories. In New York, where millions of people are living under some of the country’s strictest rules, users have been posting as they see fit, unsure, as in so many other things, what a local social network is for. Upon opening, the app shows local announcements and general safety guidelines. The company fast-tracked the rollout of a “groups” features, with which users can congregate around particular topics or causes. Nextdoor has added new features to the platform, including a map to which neighbors wishing to help can add their location and volunteering abilities, seizing a moment when neighborliness is both necessary and necessarily mediated. An offer from a “friend of a friend,” then resolution: “I’ve just found someone through this post,” the student said.

One poster with a friend who was ill was asking where to buy a thermometer a small pharmacy had some a few days ago, wrote another neighbor.Īn international student needed at home, with nobody to take her pet bird. The hardware store had received a fresh shipment of Lysol wipes and Purell, and a deli nearby had toilet paper. Savin’s neighborhood, the posts read like a diary of a neighborhood on lockdown. Last week, Nextdoor told CNN that engagement had nearly doubled. In recent weeks, however, some New Yorkers, many isolated and under quarantine, have logged on, many for the first time, with a more focused and urgent set of questions. (Users must register with their real addresses, which are confirmed by mail or cellphone billing address.) It could be a good place to ask for recommendations, sell old stuff or gain traction for a local interest or cause it could also turn nasty, or paranoid, as a space for neighbors to air grievances about anything and everything, including one another.

Weiland, a marketing professional, described her neighbor as “lovely.”īefore the virus, Nextdoor was, to most users, something between a hyperlocal Facebook and an updated version of Craigslist. Weiland, whom she has never met without a phone, screen or door between them. Now she has her medicine, and her fridge is full.

Next door neighbors