Nextdoor Relaunches Network With a Focus on News, Alerts and AI

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(Bloomberg) — Nextdoor Holdings Inc., the neighborhood-focused social network, unveiled a slew of new features as part of a sweeping redesign that aims to highlight more urgent content and boost user engagement. 

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The changes include an alert system for critical events, including power outages and severe weather, Nextdoor said on Tuesday. And there’s a local news offering that will prominently feature reports from 3,500 partner publications around the US, UK and Canada, displayed in a carousel at the top of users’ feeds.

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The San Francisco-based company is also rolling out an artificial intelligence tool that will help users in select US markets better identify local services, businesses and activities. This so-called Faves hub allows users to query a chatbot for a wide range of local recommendations, from best restaurants to child-friendly hikes. The AI agent leverages more than a decade’s worth of conversations on Nextdoor to ensure relevant replies. 

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The idea is to make Nextdoor feel more like a utility that people want to visit every day to understand their local neighborhood and community, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Nirav Tolia said in an interview.

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“AI is going to disrupt all the consumer applications of the current time,” Tolia said. “The question you have to ask yourself as the CEO of a consumer company is: Are you well-positioned to weather that or not?”

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Tolia said he believes bringing authoritative, third-party sources onto the platform will best position Nextdoor for the latest wave of technological disruption. 

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The redesign marks the most significant change at the company since its initial public offering four years ago. Nextdoor has struggled with slowing growth and years of losses, sending the stock down nearly 90% since a post-IPO peak in 2021. Tolia — who returned as CEO in 2024, nearly six years after resigning from that same role in 2018 — has been tasked with turning around the platform.

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Tolia lamented that Nextdoor hasn’t always offered the most useful, hyperlocal or timely content to its 46 million weekly active users. The new app will seek to better engage people with more authoritative information.

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“It’s not about whether we survive,” said Tolia, noting the company continues to have more than $400 million in cash on hand. “It’s about whether we thrive.”

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For now, Nextdoor doesn’t plan to pursue data licensing agreements for its trove of hyperlocal content, he added. Other social networks like Reddit Inc. have sold access to their user-generated content to help tech peers train artificial intelligence models. Companies such as Elon Musk’s xAI and Meta Platforms Inc. also are using their own social platforms to develop models. 

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“Never say never,” Tolia said, “but I have a real existential concern that any company that allows its core asset to be surfaced inside another agent is at risk of people not coming to the primary source.”

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