Nextdoor, the company for creating private social networks accessible only to your local neighbors, has had a lot of people join since it first launched in 2011: More than 14,100 neighborhoods have been created on the site, and on average 100 new neighborhoods are being added each day. But today Nextdoor is set to announce a new user that’s special — the Big Apple itself.
Today, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is set to announce a partnership with Nextdoor to adopt the service as a citywide communications tool. At the moment, the Mayor’s office is the first to sign on for using Nextdoor to communicate with NYC citizens about things like neighborhood safety issues, natural disasters, and local events. Other NYC city services are set to roll out use of the site in the coming months.
In a phone call this week, Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia said that no money has changed hands as part of this partnership — it’s been an organic approach much in the same way that a city would opt to create a Twitter or Facebook account. New York is actually just the latest (and largest) of more than 120 cities that have partnered with Nextdoor to use it in an official capacity.
He also said this wasn’t a case where the city had to be sold on the utility of technology and the social web. “The city of New York is incredibly innovative, starting with the government itself, which has really embraced the technology revolution,” Tolia said, pointing to Bloomberg and NYC’s chief digital officer Rachel Haot as leaders as particularly tech savvy leaders. “You hear that cities move slowly and have a lot of bureaucracy, but in establishing this partnership the city of New York has been as well-functioning as an organization as any company in Silicon Valley.”
In a prepared statement Bloomberg, who will announce the Nextdoor partnership in person at the company’s San Francisco headquarters today, is quoted as saying:
“Partnering with Nextdoor is another step forward in our adoption of strategic technology that better serves New Yorkers. Nextdoor gives New York neighbors an easy way to connect and communicate with those who live around them. It also provides the City with a direct line of communication to residents about important and often critical updates.”