Nextdoor social site, looking for a revival, pins hopes on partnership with local news providers

NEW YORK (AP) – Social media site Nextdoor, which aims to connect between neighbors, tries to shake a feeling of irregular history and inadequate. How? He’s heading to professional journalists for help.

On Tuesday, the company announced a partnership with more than 3,500 local news providers, which will regularly add material to the application. As part of a redesign, it expands its ability to warn users about bad weather, power outages and other hazards, and uses AI to develop suggestions for restaurants, services and local interests.

Nirav Tolia, the founding partner and CEO of the company, said, “For neighbors, they think they think they should open next day every day,” he said. “And that’s not the case today.”

Nextdoor’s potential to help him and journalists at the same time is the most interesting.

Nextdoor carries the sections of local news stories from the provider in the region where the user lives. If people want to learn more, a link is included in the news site. In the launch, Nextdoor says that the application has more than 50,000 news stories representing three -quarters of the “neighborhoods”.

A future for news that never comes

When Nextdoor began in 2011, the local news industry was in the early stages of an ongoing free decline today. The number of journalists in the USA fell slightly more than eight today in 2002 than 40 per 100,000 people. A study published this month Muck’s shelf and re -create local news. About a third of the districts of the country does not have a full -time journalist.

This turmoil was a promising pioneer and infrastructure, perhaps an application with a template for the local news of the future. Users – Nextdoor likes to call them “neighbors – – Organized in more than 200,000 different neighborhoods and once they are shared on the back fences, the ability to start speeches: Do you know a reliable baby babysitter? This building goes down the street? Who serves the best Burger?

However, Nextdoor’s developers knew technology, not news. Initially, they did not see a role for professional journalists.

“In our early days, we thought that neighbors would seize almost citizen journalists or local reporters, Tol said Tolia. “I think we concluded that neighbors can only do a lot.”

Worse, the site was a magnet for racists and cranks, the neighbors you are trying to avoid. Nextdoor was so full with suspicion – why a person with a different color or nationality walks on the street? – They had to spend a significant time to change the rules to eliminate and prevent the racist tasks of the moderators.

For some users, negatives were more outweighed than positive.

I wrote in Ralinda Harvey Smith, a woman from Santa Monica, California, at Los Angeles Times in 2020. “When I called a repairman to change my vehicle headlight, a neighbor, the next responsible, and when insetect Wipes was impossible, when a neighbor, a neighbor, to the next SH -By Fouse, said,“ Nextdoor was a valuable resource for my family. DM’d I offered to quit a little on the patio. “

“Nevertheless, I have seen the remains of racism for a long time on the site that left me a bad feeling not only about the practice, but about the city I love, but on the site I have left a bad feeling. This was logged in less frequently.

Trying to make Nextdoor necessary for users

Regardless of the reasons, sufficient users think that Nextddoor is extraordinary, where their leaders are forced to make changes. Tolia, the site has 100 million registered users, but at least once a week on the site is only 25 million, he said. Nextdoor, who opened the public to take a new financing tour in 2021, wants to see them more often.

Nextdoor hired the New York Times as a former manager in Georg Petschnigg to control changes.

The company found what the surveys wanted to learn more about what is beyond utilitarian information in users. Tolia said other social networks brought more external materials. “When you trust the content created by the user, it cannot be foreseen in terms of quality, timeiness and relevance,” he said.

“If I was instead of them, I would do it. This Spring Speculated He may be interested in buying Todd Nextdoor. Todd does not argue.

It is waiting to see if Nextdoor has a real commitment to the news, or whether he has reached more eyeballs.

“An opportunity to do the only thing Facebook can do, but can choose not to do,” TODD said. “You don’t want it to go on the way to try to get traffic for the sake of traffic, because that’s what happened to Facebook after opening the public.”

The irony of dealing with professional journalists is not lost.

“As the old one is new again,” he said. Institute of Profit Purpose. Hundreds of members are Texas Tribune, Highlands, NC The Plateau Daily News and Whitesburg, Daily Yonder in Kentucky.

Many of the participating news organizations are merged with Nextdoor and said, ım My hope members see significant benefits from this ”.

In the hope of mutual useful relationship

The local news industry continues to suffer from the same problems that have caused the collapse of the last twenty years: a decreasing number of readers and advertisers. A comment made by Tolia – about how people buy a “dead tree from the car roads to get their news – he speaks with the expectations of fading.

Facebook News Tim Franklin, President of the Medill Local News Initiative in Northwestern, said on the platform and Google’s increasing use at the expense of directing AI to news articles.

“If another ship to take Nextddoor readers to news sites and especially local news sites will be instantly for local news organizations and a real opportunity will be a real opportunity.

Josh Schneps, Who Runs A series of local news operations In New York City and Long Island, such as Flushing Times and Park Slope Courier, a soft launch has appeared in Nextddoor and has an increase in traffic to sites.

“I feel like the media is in a state of evolution and I feel no play books, Schn Schneps said. Im My aim is to bring our content to as many people as possible. I am happy to be a guinea pig for Nextdoor, ”he said.

An industry and both need help. Maybe they can help each other.

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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow Him http://x.com/dbauder And https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.