Both services DO aggregate content though, so I can see why you lumped them all together.

Here in San Francisco, neighborhoods are not precisely defined and they frequently overlap for several blocks around the borders. People living in these “border regions” may identify more with the neighborhood on one side or the other, based on their own lifestyle, travel patterns, shops and restaurants they frequent, etc. But then they go to join NextDoor and are forced into a neighborhood they don’t identify with and don’t feel they live in — or want to live in. It feels almost hostile to me, and has soured me on the service.

Within my own neighborhood association, we have several board members whom NextDoor insists do not live in our neighborhood. It’s pretty ridiculous, and NextDoor refuses to reconsider the arbitrary borders they have set. And folks assigned to the “wrong” neighborhood cannot view all of the content from the neighborhood they identify with, and are bombarded with unwanted content from a neighborhood they aren’t as interested in.

I won’t comment on the comparison to Patch, but rather, point out that Nextdoor is making a fundamental assumption mistake and is executing their business poorly.

The fundamental assumption mistake: That strangers who happen to live in the same neighborhood want to be part of a social network together. This is sometimes true but oftentimes not the case at all. (The one dynamic that works here is schools/education. Many neighborhoods exist solely or nearly solely for their public school district. Those are parents who could be persuaded to join the same socnet. But many of them already have achieved this with a Facebook Group.)

Nextdoor’s executional mistake is their site experience sucks. It’s full of spam, junk, nothingness, and no one’s here-dness. Try some random neighborhoods that it supposedly covers and the actual user experiences of being in that socnet is junky. No value. Stay on Facebook.

I do wish “local” would be figured out and would succeed. But Nextdoor ain’t it.

If that’s the case, Nextdoor already made the same mistake that Patch did — using a non-news/media sounding brand name. I worked for a lot of news publications that had a newsy name and people got what those publications were about just by hearing the name.

But one of the biggest problems while working at Patch was trying to convince people who never heard of it before that it was a news website. Many people thought it was a blog I was doing on my own and one of my co-workers had a few readers thinking that her Patch was a gardening website.

I can tell you now that based on my experience people want local news and they don’t have time for any thing with a cute name. So Nextdoor better rethink its name, but I do wish them the best of luck. I will be keeping an eye on them.

I’ve been thinking about Patch and Nextdoor a lot lately. I started a Nextdoor community about a year ago in my neighborhood; several months later a Patch launched. Ironically, I learned about the Patch site through our Nextdoor site.

I have been a longtime Patch skeptic but have found it increasingly valuable and complimentary to our Nextdoor site. Through Nextdoor I learn about breakins within a three-block radius of my house; through Patch I learn about the proposed apartment complex being discussed at the town council meeting. Through Patch, I learn about a restaurant opening; through Nextdoor I learn whether my neighbors like the new restaurant.

I love that my town of Safety Harbor has both — a town that has never been covered by the local paper (which my employer owns). Without Patch and Nextdoor, I would know almost nothing about this community of 17,000.

It’s been fascinating to live in an experimental news zone and see the results firsthand.

Julie Moos (Director of Poynter Online)