Facebook Shutters Its Community-Connecting Nextdoor Clone
Neighborhoods was Facebook's attempt to connect users who lived near each other.
Facebook's Neighborhoods tool is getting shut down.
Meta is winding down its Nextdoor-like Facebook expansion Neighborhoods, which sought to connect users who lived near each other, but never exited the testing phase.
Neighborhoods launched in May 2021 as a clear rival to Nextdoor, expanding on Facebook Groups with more functionality to find other nearby users, businesses and associations. The feature had been active in several cities in the US, such as Charlotte, North Carolina; San Diego; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Newark, New Jersey, as well as in Canada.
"When we launched Facebook Neighborhoods, our mission was to bring local communities closer together. We've learned the best way to do this is through groups, and have decided to end our test of Neighborhoods," Meta spokesperson Leah Luchetti said over email.
Instead, Meta will point users to Facebook Groups relevant to their interests and location. Ultimately, this is where Facebook will focus on, abandoning local-only Neighborhoods to direct users to Groups they can find through discovery in search. There, users can connect and discuss in subgroups called Channels.
Meta's retreat comes as Nextdoor has adopted more social features, like connecting users so that their activity shows up in news feeds. That comes at its own cost as chats over local issues get so heated that Nextdoor had to introduce a reminder telling users to chill out.