Nextdoor rolls out massive redesign with AI recommendations and emergency alerts

Nextdoor, the neighborhood social app people love to hate, is rolling out a massive design overhaul bringing a more modern look, real-time alerts, and of course, in this day and age, an AI feature called "Faves". The platform, often known for spiraling into petty disputes and occasional racial profiling, has long struggled to shake its reputation as a "snitch app".

Since its launch, it has grown to over 80 million users (or "neighbors" as Nextdoor calls them) across over 300,000 neighborhoods. Now, it is trying to steer the ship in a new direction.

Speaking with TechCrunch, the company's CEO and co-founder, Nirav Tolia, said that the goal is to increase the quality and quantity of local information. Tolia explained that Nextdoor has historically relied completely on user-generated content, which has been a mixed bag.

The service is adding feeds from 3,500 local news publishers across the U.S., U.K., and Canada. Since it's a content partnership, not a commercial one, Nextdoor will not host the articles but will instead display headlines and snippets to drive traffic back to the publishers.

The other major addition is a system for real-time safety updates and a partnership with Weather.com that will allow Nextdoor to push "hyperlocal" alerts for power outages, wildfires, and major storms.

Tolia described a "red state" alert that can take over the entire app, because when a wildfire is approaching, nobody cares about the "conversations neighbors are having about pickleball." He also noted the platform's geospatial foundation allows for alerts targeted down to a specific street, unlike more generalized Amber Alerts.

As for Faves, the AI feature is built on a proprietary LLM supposedly trained on 15 years of private neighbor conversations. Nextdoor claims this is better than ChatGPT for local queries because the data is not indexed by search engines and contains hyperlocal knowledge you just cannot find elsewhere.

Instead of sifting through dozens of posts, you can ask a question like "What is the best place to hike with kids?" and get a summarized answer based on past discussions.