Next Door Is A Private Online Social Network For Neighbors

Tech companies like Twitter and Facebook allow you to connect with people all over the world, but instead of global, because the next big thing in social media is all about the faces outside your front door. Next door is a private online social network for neighbors that have just raised over a hundred million dollars, including the recent funding round of sixty million dollars.

A private social network for the neighborhood

Next door is a private social network for the neighborhood, we know about Facebook to connect with friends and Linkedin to connect with business, associates Twitter to connect with people with whom we have things in common, but what about the community right outside our front door our neighbors? That's where Next door comes in.

On bill neuro gives you quite a shout out in a recent piece talking about how you've rolled up your sleeves and gotten involved in everything from hiring to strategy they're at Next door, tell me a business model wise, I know you have said for a long time not interested in station at this stage, but given that Twitter just had its IPO and everybody's talking about revenue.

Users are contributing to that website

Do you see kind of contextual advertising or maybe more local services as being an early play for revenue Next door? I think if you look at over the past say 10 15 years in the consumer internet, you've seen a pattern repeat itself over and over and over again, which is you see a website take off where the users are contributing to that website.

For the first five or six years, you're focused on growth, and then once it gets really large you see people come back and work at monetization, and some of the highest market cap names that we talked about like LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook they all started that way.

For Next door in particular when it peaked in 2006 us local advertising was over a hundred billion dollars, and most of those dollars were going into channels that are under threat from tec-9, the local newspapers, local radio, all those things are being disrupted.

Creating a lifeline to your neighborhood

Those dollars have come down not to mention Yellow Pages those dollars have come down, and they need somewhere to go, we think this will be an incredible asset which you monetize when it's that time in the company's life, and they're of mobile is a big part of your growth story, you did an iPhone app than you did Android after that.

How big is mobile now in terms of engagement and in terms of just user time accessing Next door? Our mobile users are the most engaged on our platform, and it makes sense because we are a social network that is all about local.

When you're thinking about creating a lifeline to your neighborhood, you want that not only when you're sitting at home, but when you're away from the neighborhood, and that's what Next door for Nate for mobile provides for you.

Tease together an online community

You can take your neighborhood, no matter where you go with your smartphone at the same time bill, it's interesting because we saw a lot of traditional publishing houses, like The Wall Street Journal, like the New York Times over the last couple of years decide that. Local was the future, and start locally-focused sections only to shut them down within a couple of years. It didn't seem to work for them.

Why is it going to work for this kind of company? It turns out that the skills that are necessary to tease together an online community and make it come alive are very nuanced, and they're not held by that many people. We've been lucky enough to get back near here a couple of times now.

He and his team understand these components of what it takes to make a community come alive, just putting a bunch of links out there a bunch of local news stories, and say come to our local website that doesn't work, but if you have the ability to get the community part, you end up with a much more high fidelity signal awesome content.

The thing tends to come alive so I think it's the skill set of the team that separates this from those other efforts.

How to keep so many models

You're on the board of OpenTable, you're on the board of Ober, an addition to Next door, how do you manage to keep so many models in your head? I'm just lucky enough to work with great entrepreneurs. In every one of those cases, there's an amazing team that it's making it all happen, and I just try and work as hard as I can in the background.