Neighborhood network Nextdoor takes up residence on Android

Bring on the muffin baskets. Nextdoor, a private social network for more than 18,000 U.S. neighborhoods, is moving into its new home on Android.

Wednesday, the 2-year-old company is expanding beyond its Web and iPhone origins to invite more people into its private communities where neighbors exchange critical information, swap last-minute baking needs, get police updates, and coordinate block parties.

Nextdoor for Android comes with the same feature set members find elsewhere, which means people can update their neighbors with goings-on, photos, and urgent alerts. The backwards-compatible application is said to work for 96 percent of Android users.

"We believe that we are becoming the lifeline of the neighborhood," Nextdoor CEO and co-founder Nirav Tolia told CNET. "We are becoming that essential information source that keeps you notified of all the things that are happening around you."

The application, however, only becomes essential when neighbors actually use it for timely and relevant updates, which appears to be the case in select urban metros like San Francisco, where 97 percent of neighborhoods are represented on the service. And if Nextdoor's iPhone release in late May is any indication, the Android app will stimulate a significant amount of community-related activity. Twenty percent of all Nextdoor content and 37 percent of urgent alerts are now created from the iPhone application, Tolia said.

Still, Nextdoor has a ways to go before it becomes an integral part of communities. The application is said to have penetration to 88 percent of San Diego neighborhoods, but updates remain few and far between in some areas. One downtown neighborhood, for instance, saw its last update more than one month ago.