With small businesses on Facebook potentially hamstrung by the software changes related to the Apple IOS update, and its effect on Facebook users, is there another option for small businesses to connect locally?
Nextdoor is a hyperlocal social networking service for neighborhoods with extensive support for small business…. think water cooler meets town square meets Main Street.
Nextdoor connects neighbors to each other — and to everything nearby: Local businesses, services, news updates, recommendations, and stuff for sale from the people down the block.
With discussions around an IPO heating up, CEO Sarah Friar’s wide-ranging interview on CNBC, covered their growth of 45% year over year and exponential growth of Daily Active Users (DAU). And don’t be mistaken, this hyper-local resource is extremely global….. 11 countries / 276,000 neighborhoods, one in three households in the US are enrolled.
Friar states, ‘We put a lot of work in last year around things like business tools to make sure that we are that place, not just for residents, but also for [items for] sale, local businesses [such as] a local plumber or service provider.”
Nextdoor does not face the same privacy issues as Facebook because, according to Friar, “we have first party data – we have built out our own ad tech stack and so in some ways it [the IOS Update] may actually be beneficial to [users of] Nextdoor.
Nextdoor’s privacy policy differs from comparable sites like Facebook and Clubhouse —
Nextdoor states, “We do not share your name, address or email with advertisers, and your conversations will not be indexed by search engines. We are committed to building trust with neighbors every day”.
How does this compare? This article: Clubhouse Is Recording Your Conversations. That’s Not Even Its Worst Privacy Problem, might clarify.
Because Nextdoor verifies user addresses, stores can be confident that customer live need the business. Instantly reach your most valuable customers — your neighbors — and become a trusted member of the neighborhood. From their site: Instantly unlock a built-in audience of real neighbors without having to worry about gathering followers.
Nextdoor is not without the issues that plague social media platforms from trolls to scams. With an impending IPO many of the growing pains are behind them. Further, Friar shares Nextdoor’s approach, “We’ve always had a layered approach, so from a moderation perspective, rather than just saying it’s all about technology which clearly has failed in many places, we’ve actually tried to connect a human moderation system to a technology-based platform.”
There were major concerns over a nefarious neighbohood-watch , however, in 2021, Nextdoor is weighing an IPO and addressed issues of privacy, enacted anti-racism features, and honed their relationship with governments and police.
As a local retailer, coupling Nextdoor with NearSt is an alternative to Facebook to grow brick and mortar’s presence exponentially.
Questions? Confused? Need Advice? Need a Friend?
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RCCA 