Media companies large and small are discovering the value of – and data accessible through – the popular neighborhood social network Nextdoor, reports Benjamin Mullin for Poynter.
Mr. Mullin writes:
Late last year, the San Diego Union-Tribune began a daunting project: Create an almanac for the San Diego metropolitan area, a region that 3.1 million residents call home.
As they began profiling the city's smaller communities ..., journalists at the Union-Tribune realized there was a huge reservoir of information they hadn't tapped yet: Nextdoor.
According to the article, journalists are making use of the broad reach and potential for micro-targeting that Nextdoor provides.
The San Diego Union-Tribune isn't alone ... Several dozen news organizations, including the San Antonio Express-News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, KQED and, as of last week, The Washington Post, have started using the social network to connect with readers.
Here's how it works: Nextdoor's news partners can use the social network to target their posts down to the community level, allowing them to share headlines, images and story intros that link back to their news sites. The stories appear in the Nextdoor news feed app and website, as well as in a daily newsletter that members receive.
News partners can see and respond to replies to their posts, but the rest of the neighborhood conversation remains private for the verified members of that community.
The unique structure of Nextdoor also helps cut down on a recurring phenomenon of the modern internet landscape: trolling.
Per Mr. Mullin:
The quality of engagement on the social network is high, [said Ricky Young, investigations editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune]. In part because Nextdoor is a protected space, he said, people seem pretty engaged: Reach for some posts occasionally rivals or even exceeds the numbers for stories shared on Facebook.
There's little spamming or trolling because it's a vetted network (Nextdoor uses billing and street addresses to verify that users are actually residents of various neighborhoods).
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*The Glen Civic Association does not control or maintain The Glen’s presence on Nextdoor. We do encourage Glen residents to participate in the social network as a way to stay connected with their neighbors. Glen board members are also independently active on Nextdoor.
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