Nextdoor strengthens neighborhood connections with new product strategy and features to build an active valued community
New updates foster a sense of belonging and enable neighbors to connect to the neighborhoods that matter to them
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, February 15, 2022 — Today, Nextdoor (NYSE: KIND) announced a new product strategy that builds an “active valued community” to guide the development of the platform, along with features to help achieve the company’s purpose to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on.
Research has identified that neighbors primarily turn to Nextdoor to connect to the neighborhoods that matter to them so that they can belong. Nextdoor’s product strategy fulfills this need by enabling neighbors and organizations to build an “active valued community” — an engaged community of neighbors, businesses, and public services that you can trust and depend on to exchange valuable information, goods, and services. The product strategy was driven by neighborhood insights and developed by Kiran Prasad, Nextdoor’s Head of Product, who joined the company last year after serving at LinkedIn.
“Nextdoor’s vision is to inspire active neighbors and organizations to continuously exchange value, utility, and community for all,” said Kiran Prasad, Head of Product at Nextdoor. “By focusing our product strategy around building an active valued community, we can help create a vibrant, welcoming neighborhood both online and offline.”
To implement this strategy in the product, Nextdoor has begun testing and rolling out various features and updates that bring value and delight for neighbors, including:
- New welcome features for new neighbors: Existing neighbors will be notified when someone new has joined the Nextdoor neighborhood and can easily welcome their arrival with celebratory reactions or virtual gifts, including cookies and flowers. Virtual gifts are a fun, interactive way to greet new neighbors.
- Revamped neighbor profiles: The new profile design and onboarding flow encourages you to introduce yourself with options to add a short bio, chosen pronouns, and upload a photo to put a face to your name. A complete profile lets you recognize the people you already wave to in your neighborhood, or those you have yet to meet. Nextdoor ensures you’re connected to real people and requires neighbors to use their real name to foster a trusted environment to meet and learn more about those nearby.
- Connect to deepen real-world relationships: Connections are a new way to find and keep up with the neighbors you know and care about. When you connect with another neighbor, you will both see each other’s posts, comments, and reactions highlighted in your feed and have the ability to @mention them in your posts and comments. There is also a Neighbors You May Know feature that recommends people that you may want to connect with based on proximity, Connections in common, on-platform interactions, and your personal contacts. Since the experience is based on geographical location, Nextdoor uniquely provides a way to bring online connections into the real world.
- A streamlined layout and navigation: The layout of Nextdoor is being redesigned to focus on the features that neighbors use most for a simpler and faster way to get things done. Updates include the removal of duplicative and outdated links, improved search capabilities, and a single, more prominent post composer to use whether you want to sell or give away an item, take a poll, or share a video, or tag a location. The new layout also makes critical features like privacy settings easier to access by moving them to your profile.
- A more relevant feed: Nextdoor is adding to the experience of the main feed so you can join the conversation in more neighborhoods that matter to you, and be sure not to miss content from your Connections on Nextdoor. As the product evolves, the feed will further reflect your day-to-day life and feel more relevant, active, and fresh.
The new layout and feed are currently being tested in select markets and will be fully implemented globally in the coming months. All neighbors on Nextdoor can explore their neighborhood now by introducing themselves with a revamped profile and sending Connection requests — early tests among post creators in select markets found that having a profile photo resulted in 180% more profile views and 46% more Connection requests. Neighbors can help build an active valued community by completing their profile and uploading a photo on the upper left corner of the Nextdoor app or at nextdoor.com/profile.
About Nextdoor
Nextdoor (NYSE: KIND) is where you connect to the neighborhoods that matter to you so you can belong. Kindness is core to our purpose: to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on. Neighbors around the world turn to Nextdoor daily to receive trusted information, give and get help, get things done, and build real-world connections with those nearby — neighbors, businesses, and public services.
We believe connecting with others is a universal human need. That truth, and the reality that neighborhoods are among the most important communities in our lives, have been guiding principles for Nextdoor since the beginning.
Today, neighbors rely on Nextdoor in more than 285,000 neighborhoods around the world, including the United States (nearly 1 in 3 U.S. households), the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, and Canada, with many more to come.
Nextdoor is based in San Francisco. For additional information and images: nextdoor.com/newsroom.