Back in October Nextdoor, the startup that lets people create private social networks with others who live in their local neighborhoods, raised a new $60 million funding round boosting its cash pot to $100 million. It’s now live across 22,500 of neighborhoods in the US. So as you can tell this is going to be a pretty hot space, aiming to be for our “local life what Facebook is for our social life and what LinkedIn is for our professional life,” says CEO and founder Nirav Tolia.
However, others want in on this space. Streetlife.com is a UK competitor, but only has a website. But now Tel-Aviv-based Meetey wants to do something similar to Nextdoor and today it’s expanding to over 90 countries beyond its home market in Israel and says it has hit 200,000 users. It will be interesting to watch this David and Goliath battle.
The company also unveiled data from its platform that shows that on average, active users are forming 56 distinct new relationships that don’t exist on their current social graph.
This suggests that current social platforms like Facebook aren’t good at real-world interactions. I mean, when was the last time you wanted your random neighbours to see pictures of your new baby? Yeah, let’s not go there…
It would seem Meetey has its work cut out for it trying to go up against NextDoor, which has such enormous funding and a head start in the crucial US market.
But it’s interesting that Meetey seems to push the flirting side of neighbourhoods. Could this be the Tinder of Neighbourhoods?
Perhaps then next Social Media Gurus will have to become Relationship Counsellors as well.