This is an interesting article about the neighborhood-based social network, Nextdoor, and how it has become a tool for housing politics:

Overall, activists both for and against more housing regard Nextdoor as an increasingly influential and even critical tool in the fight, which conflicts with the platform’s marketing as a friendly, kinder social media. Rather than being the neighborhood bulletin board, Nextdoors around the country are looking more like the local zoning commission hearing.

Housing debate is no stranger to social media, but in the case of Nextdoor, the audience gets focused down to the scale of a neighborhood. And that clearly changes things.

For the full article, click here.

I’m on the Board for my condo in the St. Lawrence Market. I am one of three Directors. Although, the building is split up into 2 phases and so, in reality, there are other Directors involved. Sometimes developers phase their buildings (even if it’s physically one structure) in order to mitigate risk. That’s what was done here.

As a result of sitting on the Board, I get to see every single resident complaint. They all go to the management office, but then they get circulated to all of the Directors so that we can address them at our next monthly meeting. We try our hardest to address all complaints but some, quite honestly, can be really hard to resolve.

The most difficult to address are the ones that stem from people being inconsiderate. They’re related to noise, garbage being thrown off balconies and so on. These are tough because they have nothing to do with the building or the management. They have to do with the people. And it’s bound to happen in any environment where you have a lots of people living in close proximity to one another. In a low-rise neighborhood, it’s dogs pooping on your front lawn.

We’re constantly trying to come up with different solutions that go beyond just sending out letters–including knocking on doors. But none of them are ideal. It’s often hard to pinpoint who’s doing what and letters are slow. 

But here’s another idea.

I think, the answer could be in some sort of private social network for apartment and condo buildings. Think Nextdoor.com for multi-family dwellings. This would personalize the complaints (as opposed to just using management letters) and it could create some societal pressure to better behave. If you threw garbage off your balcony you would then run the risk of getting called out, on the network, in front of the entire building.

Nextdoor.com says it needs at least 50 households to make a neighborhood viable. That would be easily achievable in a lot of the condo buildings in Toronto. Neighborhoods probably scale better in general, but maybe it would also work for buildings. There’s certainly a need.

One startup that’s been on my radar (which isn’t yet available in Canada) is Nextdoor. They describe themselves as a “private social network for your neighborhood” and are active in more than 22,500 American neighborhoods. To date they’ve raised $100M in venture funding.

From what I can tell, their primary focus (and big value proposition) has been around safety and security. Residents can use it to report incidents, such as a car break in. There are obviously other use cases, but I keep hearing this one come up. And I think it works because the community is so closely controlled. Every address is verified.

But a few things come to mind as I read about their success and growth (400% neighborhood growth over the past year). How many social networks can people handle? Why can’t this be done using an existing platform (and perhaps a closed group)? And is there an opportunity to create the same kind of closed social network for condo and apartment buildings?

There are lots of social networks out there. Whether you’re a wine snob or a pet owner, somebody has thought it. But if Path’s recent struggles are any indication, niche social networks can be tough. Which is why Nextdoor seems like a bit of an outlier to me.

But I think the success of Nextdoor stems from the fact that, even in our hyper connected world, a lot of us, paradoxically, still don’t know the people who live right beside us. And I think this is also the case in multi-family dwellings. It’s a problem I’ve thought about and discussed with an number of my condo-dwelling friends.

So I look forward to seeing how Nextdoor evolves and also seeing if they end up expanding to condos and apartments.