Nextdoor just launched a redesigned app called the “new Nextdoor.” It adds local news, real-time alerts, and an AI-powered feature called “Faves” to help users find local businesses and spots. The entire design got a modern refresh.
Nextdoor, launched 15 years ago, has struggled with slowing growth and declining engagement amid issues of misinformation and racism. Now, CEO Nirav Tolia says the update aims to boost the quality and quantity of local info.
The app partnered with 3,500 local publishers in the US, UK, and Canada, including The San Francisco Standard, The London Standard, and The Toronto Star. These partners get headline, snippet, and image distribution on Nextdoor, driving traffic back to their sites. 
Tolia on adding local news:
“The reason that this is so important for us is historically, Nextdoor has relied 100% on user-generated content, just the content that’s created by your neighbors,” Tolia said. “That’s been a great source of information. But, to really make sure if it’s happening in your neighborhood, we need to bring in local news as well. So this is the first time we’re letting third party publishers use our distribution.”
Nextdoor isn’t paying for content or charging publishers. The company plans to add native profiles for small businesses, schools, and organizations next.
Real-time alerts now show weather, traffic, power outages, storms, and wildfires. A dynamic neighborhood map displays the alerts. Partners powering this include Samdesk and Weather.com.
Tolia explains alert levels:
“When there’s something that is definitely worth paying attention to, we call that the yellow state, and we’ll put that alert right at the top,” Tolia said. “When there’s something critical, we call that the red state and it’ll take over the whole app, because at that point, you don’t care about the conversations neighbors are having about pickleball. You don’t really care about the new restaurant review that the local publishers put in. You need to get together with your neighbors and help save each other’s lives in some cases.”
Alerts are hyper-localized down to the house, targeting only impacted users.
The AI feature “Faves” uses an LLM trained on 15 years of neighbor conversations to offer local recommendations. Users can ask things like “What is the best place to hike with kids?” and get summaries linked to real posts.
Tolia on Faves:
“We have an LLM for every neighborhood where we’ve taken 15 years of neighbor conversations and we can now answer questions about that information in a really compelling way,” Tolia said. “So we have the first, as far as we know, the first truly local AI that’s powered by neighbor conversations.”
“This content is proprietary to Nextdoor,” Tolia said. “We’ve never shared it. It’s not indexed by Google. It’s not available on ChatGPT, and again, because we know where you live, we can target the information to you in the most relevant way.”
Nextdoor’s focus is on digitizing true local word-of-mouth that you can’t get from Google or large AI. It’s a utility-centered platform, not just a social network.
“I give the funny example of, if you wanted to know all the lemonade stands that kids are operating in your neighborhood, you can’t go to Google Maps and find that,” Tolia said. “You can’t go to ChatGPT and ask that question, right? The only way is for you to ask your neighbors. And so that’s what Nextdoor is all about. So what are we going to do? We’re going to recommit to really making this feel hyperlocal. It’s really important for us to be seen less as a social network and more as a utility centric network.”
