Nextdoor Securely Connects Virginia-Highland

Nextdoor, a free social media service that is like Facebook but with stronger privacy settings, is becoming very popular in Virginia-Highland and already has about a thousand residents connecting with their neighbors.

Nextdoor's expansion into Atlanta is headed by their Senior City Strategist Robbie Turner, who grew up in Buckhead. He told Neighbor Newspapers the site continues to expland around the metro area.

About 370 of the 3,000 households in Virginia-Highland have joined. About 1,000 residents in Buckhead have joined, and surrounding sites continue to see an increase in users.

Nextdoor does have many of the same uses as Facebook. Users often share advice on choosing service professionals like plumbers, babysitters and doctors. Or they'll talk about the latest news, events and volunteering opportunities. Sometimes it is also used to unite neighbors behind a cause, like halting the creation of a nightclub near a neighborhood, keeping an eye on crime or launching parties and cookouts.

But it differs from Facebook in one big aspect: it is very secure. Even the homepage is an https page, meaning it is secure from the start, and specific Nextdoor information is not indexed on Google searches. Nextdoor's staff also conducts weekly sweeps to look for registered sex offenders and removes their addresses from the network.

Click here to see if your neighborhood is on Nextdoor and learn how to join them.

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