Facebook is testing a Neighborhood feature to compete with Nextdoor

By Eric Abent/

There's no lack of niche social media networks out there, and one of the more recognizable is probably Nextdoor. Nextdoor, as many people probably already know, aims to connect users to other people living in their neighborhood. As it turns out, Facebook may be looking to take a page out of Nextdoor's book, as it's currently testing a new Neighborhood feature on a small scale.

The feature was first outed by social media consultant Matt Navarra on Twitter. Navarra shared a number of screenshots that take us through the process of getting set up with the new feature – Facebook will use location data to determine a user's neighborhood before running them through a list of rules concerning interacting with neighbors. It seems that Facebook requires a certain number of users to sign up before it creates a Neighborhood, and that Facebook will also ask users questions about their neighborhoods, perhaps to get conversation rolling.

Navarra says that you'll have the option of creating a special Neighborhood profile that gives neighbors information about you without first requiring that you add them as friends on Facebook. It sounds like an interesting feature, and in a statement to Bloomberg, Facebook confirmed that it is indeed testing the feature on a small scale.

"More than ever, people are using Facebook to participate in their local communities," a Facebook spokesperson told Bloomberg. "To help make it easier to do this, we are rolling out a limited test of Neighborhoods, a dedicated space within Facebook for people to connect with their neighbors."

For now, testing is limited to Calgary, but assuming that test goes well, we could see it roll out to more regions in the future. We'll let you know when Facebook shares more about this Neighborhoods feature, so stay tuned for that.

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