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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Michael Sometimes, I think, that everything on the Internet has already been invented, and then someone comes along and creates something so new, unique, and simple that it's surprising that noone has thought of this before.
For example, in big cities, it's a common problem that people see their neighbors in the building or on the street and say "hello", but it's yet a different story to get to know them close and invite them over to your birthday party. How can you approach these folks? This gap is now being filled by the nextdoor.com website. To register there, they require that you verify your address, and then they unlock the Facebook-like neighborhood forums, where you can post messages, get hitched with friendly neighbors, or get to know who's selling a bicycle, whose house has been haunted by raccoons, or who has had their potted plants stolen from their patio by some low-life.
Because the postings are restricted to the the immediate neighborhood, this allows for much more open communication. If you're living in an expensive part of town and want to buy an item, say, a surfboard from some guy around the corner, there's no reason to assume that anything will go wrong with the transaction. On the other hand, if you respond to an offer on the popular Craigslist online forum for used items, by contacting someone living in a bad neighborhood, you need to consider the possibility that you might end up getting mugged by a crazy meth head who is doing exactly that for a living.
Or would you advertise that your appartment is for rent while you're away for four weeks? If you post this on Craigslist, I recommend you also put a sign at the door that says "Lots of laptops and cameras inside, please take what you need!", since there's lots of shady characters lurking and waiting to take action on news like these. If you post on nextdoor.com, however, it's slightly safer (albeit not really safe), because only people in your immediate posh neighborhood can read it.
The topics discussed on the forum range from complaints about stolen patio plants, reports on gunfire heard at night, crazy panhandlers on 24th Street, nightly noise disturbances, all kinds of burglaries in garages, houses, car break-ins, and tipps on how to protect your pets from brazenly roaming raccoons and skunks. If you, my dear readers in Germany, think that I'm exaggerating here, you have no idea on what it's like to live in the Wild Wild West for twenty years. This isn't sleepy Germany, you really get your high rent money's worth here.
Another side effect of posting under their real name is that it's quite rare that participants in a discussion go haywire and start insulting people. Who would risk to lose face with their neighbors for being abusive online? In expensive neighborhoods like ours, it's also quite common to talk to people with solid education, although I've got to say that in Noe Valley there's also a lot of old hippies who seem to have accumulated money not by a carreer in a lucrative profession, but by sitting in a home for 30 years, purchased by accident in the 80ies with Aunt Sally's inheritance, that's now worth millions.
One side effect of reading Nextdoor news daily, and while constantly finding out about burglaries in our relatively safe neighborhood, is without doubt a higher level of alertness. People tend to worry more, and start investigating if there's a rustling noise in the parking garage at night. On the other hand, it's good to know that other people are also affected, if one's bicycle gets stolen from the garage or one's car is broken into or stolen as well (Rundbrief 03/2012).
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