Nextdoor.com

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

Hello community-minded people! I wanted to pass along word of a new site, nextdoor.com, that's trying to build social networks out of neighborhoods. Here is a New York Times article about it.

You need at least ten verified residents of a neighborhood to sign up within 21 days to get it going. The areas they mark as neighborhoods are smaller chunks than we're used to thinking in -- there are probably at least six surrounding "Davis Square".

Here are the neighborhoods for Cambridge:
https://nextdoor.com/find-neighborhood/ma/cambridge/
and Somerville:
https://nextdoor.com/find-neighborhood/ma/somerville/

The only one that I know for sure has gotten started is Powderhouse.

(I have no affliation with Nextdoor -- I just think it would be cool to have more of these functioning for our area.)

Edit: Since my house is on the border of their Spring Hill and Powderhouse neighborhoods, in last night's repeated attempts to sign up I volunteered to get Spring Hill rolling. As part of that, I was invited to define the borders of "Spring Hill". So apparently if you're the first to get the ball rolling on a neighborhood, you get to say where it is. I didn't actually end up doing that, as they then fixed the bug that was preventing me from joining Powderhouse. ;-)

Comments

[ron_newman]

I've heard of a similar-sounding site called MeetTheNeighbors.org but I haven't enrolled in it. Has anyone else here tried either NextDoor or MeetTheNeighbors?

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I'm really wondering where they get their boundaries for neighborhoods - Ten Hills seems to be a bit larger than it really is, on their page.

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

According to the New York Times article, they get them from a company called Maponics. Of course, that doesn't answer the question of where Maponics gets its ideas. ;-)

Edit: Here's the FAQ answer from Maponics: "There are multiple sources for the neighborhood data including real estate agents, municipal records, local residents and other public and private resources. We also use feedback from our customers to validate boundaries and make improvements."

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

The entire city of Medford seems to be one "neighborhood" in nextdoor.com. If a few of the Medford residents here on davis square want to try to do this, I'm game.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the city no longer has their file called TenHills.jpg, which is referenced on the wikipedia article; but it seems to me the boundary is the highway.

Google maps shows the same boundaries that maponics uses.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Nextdoor tells me my address on Bay State Avenue doesn't fall within the Powder House neighborhood, even though I can see the whole street on the Powder House map. It's not in Davis or Magoun, either. Whatevs.

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

That happened to me and also ceo. You can file a support request with them if you want to bother. ;-)

[ron_newman]

Yeah, most people would say Ten Hills is only on the far side of I-93, and that anything on the near side is part of Winter Hill.

Also, do you consider the Armory to be part of the 'Powderhouse' neighborhood? I sure don't!

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I think many of those borders are VERY wrong.

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

Not sure if it's the same function or not but NabeWise is a pretty good site for neighborhood info. Haven't looked at it lately but i know they at least were trying to get it a little social.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Mine isnt' a bug, but I would not call my neighborhood "Tufts" when "Powderhouse" is an option. Their "Powderhouse" looks like what I would call "Ball Square" and their "Tufts" looks like what *I* would call Powderhouse.

(Of course, I'm perfectly willing to call my neighborhood "Tufts" when ordering a 6-pack of cookies delivered by bike to the Tufts campus ;-)

[starphire.livejournal.com]

Agreed on both counts.

Given their sources of information, though, I'm guessing that "real estate agents" probably have something to do with the skew seen here - i.e. certain desirable-sounding squares/neighborhoods that get billed as "nearby" or even treated as if the address was within its boundaries.
I also wonder if they were aiming for roughly equal divisions in each "neighborhood", such as in number of housing units - perhaps for database management reasons. Hence the miniscule Ten Hills neighborhood gets expanded (and has a better chance of getting enough people signed up to make it a viable neighborhood unit on this site), while Winter Hill gets shrunk and nudged southward into more debatable neighborhood boundaries. The skew there is so exaggerated that even the summit of Winter Hill itself is left out of its own neighborhood!

What a hoot. Whatever the rationale, the clumsy redefinition of neighborhood boundaries might even turn enough people off from using it to do them more harm than good, in terms of getting lots of people to use it. Personally, I feel as though these 'neighborhoods' are far too large anyway to fit most peoples' ideas of how many streets/doors someone can live from you and still be thought of as your neighbor. If they were thinking in terms of groupings that'd be likely to host an informal and neighborly-welcoming Block Party to encourage knowing your neighbors, the idea might seem more naturally applicable to an online version of that community grouping.

[tealegirle.livejournal.com]

There's a Tufts neighborhood that seems to include both Somerville & Medford.

[artguychris.livejournal.com]

MzRowan, so were you successful in starting Spring Hill? I just clicked through and it asked me to create the pilot web site for that neighborhood.

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

No, I opted to join Powderhouse instead, since my house was right on the border.

[somervilleguy.livejournal.com]

How so? It looks to be drawn along the Medford Somerville border (at least according to the link provided).

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy to join the Davis Square neighborhood, or the one immediately north--bounded by College, Broadway and Holland, I don't know what you'd call that--but since we haven't technically started living there yet (soon!) I feel weird about starting it. But if someone else does, let me know and I'll sign up.

[ron_newman]

Is your house in a place that you would call Powderhouse, or is it way out near the Armory where no sane person would call it that?

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

If so, why is 'desirable' Davis Square so tiny and 'Powder House' so big? These are some really weird neighborhoods.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

When you try to start a new site with them, they mention that the outline of the neighborhood will be defined by the people who sign up. I think the map they show you in the beginning is just a pre-generated set of suggestions.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I'm amused that most of Powderhouse Circle (and the convenience store with the big sign saying "Powder House Square") is not in the Powderhouse neighborhood.

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

No, it's true, it's totally in Spring Hill...you can see the Armory from our backyard.