{"id":180773,"date":"2025-07-15T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/15\/nextdoor-redesigns-app-with-ai-recommendations-local-news-and-real-time-emergency-alerts-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2025-07-15T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T09:00:00","slug":"nextdoor-redesigns-app-with-ai-recommendations-local-news-and-real-time-emergency-alerts-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/15\/nextdoor-redesigns-app-with-ai-recommendations-local-news-and-real-time-emergency-alerts-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Nextdoor redesigns app with AI recommendations, local news, and real-time emergency alerts | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Neighborhood social app Nextdoor is launching a redesigned version of its service that it\u2019s calling the \u201cnew Nextdoor.\u201d The app is adding local news, real-time alerts, and an AI-powered feature called \u201cFaves\u201d that\u2019s designed for discovering local businesses and spots. Nextdoor has also updated its overall design to look more contemporary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Launched 15 years ago, Nextdoor has long served as a popular platform for neighborhood conversations, helping users connect over things like recommendations for plumbers and suggestions for nearby places to eat. But eventually, its growth stalled and engagement declined as the platform became associated with posts containing misinformation<\/a> and racism<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, the company is looking to turn things around<\/a> and attract more users by making its platform more helpful, useful, and timely. With this redesign, Nextdoor is looking to increase the quality and quantity of local information on the platform, Nextdoor CEO and co-founder Nirav Tolia told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

To bring news to its platform, Nextdoor has partnered with 3,500 local publications across the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Notable outlets include the San Francisco Standard, The London Standard, and The Toronto Star.<\/p>\n

Image Credits:<\/strong>Nextdoor<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe reason that this is so important for us is historically, Nextdoor has relied 100% on user-generated content, just the content that\u2019s created by your neighbors,\u201d Tolia said. \u201cThat\u2019s been a great source of information. But, to really make sure if it\u2019s happening in your neighborhood, we need to bring in local news as well. So this is the first time we\u2019re letting third party publishers use our distribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tolia stated that these aren\u2019t commercial agreements, as Nextdoor isn\u2019t paying for the content, nor are the publishers paying the company. Additionally, Nextdoor isn\u2019t hosting the content; it\u2019s simply displaying a headline, a snippet, and an image, and directing traffic to the publications. Users will be able to discuss the news in a comments section under each post.<\/p>\n

Tolia noted that publishers are just the first new type of content coming to Nextdoor, as the platform plans to allow small businesses, schools, and organizations to have native presences in the app in the future as well.<\/p>\n

In terms of the new alerts, Nextdoor now shows real-time updates on things like weather, traffic, power outages, storms, and wildfires. These alerts will appear on a dynamic neighborhood map, allowing neighbors to have timely conversations about safety and preparedness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The service is partnering with Samdesk and Weather.com, which includes The Weather Channel app and Weather.com<\/a>, to power these alerts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Image Credits:<\/strong>Nextdoor<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen there\u2019s something that is definitely worth paying attention to, we call that the yellow state, and we\u2019ll put that alert right at the top,\u201d Tolia said. \u201cWhen there\u2019s something critical, we call that the red state and it\u2019ll take over the whole app, because at that point, you don\u2019t care about the conversations neighbors are having about pickleball. You don\u2019t 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\u2019s lives in some cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tolia noted that these alerts are hyper-localized because Nextdoor is built on a geospatial platform. So unlike Amber Alerts that are sent out to everyone in a certain location, Nextdoor says it can personalize its alerts down to the house. For example, if there\u2019s a power outage, the app will only send the alert to the people whose power is out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for the launch of Faves, Tolia says recommendations from neighbors are more valuable than going on Google or ChatGPT when looking to find a local restaurant or a place to spend time with family over the weekend, which is why Nextdoor is launching the feature.\u00a0The new Faves feature displays curated lists of recommendations, and also lets you ask specific questions to get suggestions. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an LLM for every neighborhood where we\u2019ve taken 15 years of neighbor conversations and we can now answer questions about that information in a really compelling way,\u201d Tolia said. \u201cSo we have the first, as far as we know, the first truly local AI that\u2019s powered by neighbor conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can ask questions like, \u201cWhat is the best place to hike with kids?\u201d and receive a quick, summarized response that pulls information from posts from real users on Nextdoor. Underneath the summary, you can see and click through to the posts that the summary is referencing.<\/p>\n

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Image Credits:<\/strong>Nextdoor<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThis content is proprietary to Nextdoor,\u201d Tolia said. \u201cWe\u2019ve never shared it. It\u2019s not indexed by Google. It\u2019s not available on ChatGPT, and again, because we know where you live, we can target the information to you in the most relevant way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tolia noted that Nextdoor\u2019s unique value is in digitizing and capturing local word-of-mouth, the kind of hyperlocal information that isn\u2019t available through platforms like Google or ChatGPT, because you can only get it from direct conversations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI give the funny example of, if you wanted to know all the lemonade stands that kids are operating in your neighborhood, you can\u2019t go to Google Maps and find that,\u201d Tolia said. \u201cYou can\u2019t go to ChatGPT and ask that question, right? The only way is for you to ask your neighbors. And so that\u2019s what Nextdoor is all about. So what are we going to do? We\u2019re going to recommit to really making this feel hyperlocal. It\u2019s really important for us to be seen less as a social network and more as a utility centric network.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Neighborhood social app Nextdoor is launching a redesigned version of its service that it\u2019s calling the \u201cnew Nextdoor.\u201d The app is adding local news, real-time alerts, and an AI-powered feature called \u201cFaves\u201d that\u2019s designed for discovering local businesses and spots. Nextdoor has also updated its overall design to look more contemporary.\u00a0 Launched 15 years ago, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":180774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-180773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}