It was the ideal proof-of-concept and a PR coup: a New York Timesarticle that described how the Seattle Police Department usedNextdoor, a community-based social-networking site—a mini-Facebook just for your neighborhood—to find the owner of a stolen camera that officers had recovered. One officer posted a photo of the camera on Nextdoor, and a local user realized it was the same one in a Craigslist lost-and-found post he’d recently clicked on. Soon, the camera and its owner, a photographer from Louisiana, were reunited.
Sean Whitcomb, the department’s public-affairs director, says the camera’s owner sent the department a king cake—the traditional Mardi Gras delicacy from New Orleans—as a thank you.
Launched in 2011, Nextdoor allows neighborhood residents to connect with one another online, sharing classified ads, notices about nearby events, and observations and warnings about crime trends. The platform has the potential to bring out the best and worst in communities—it brings neighbors closer together, but can amplify their worst fears—and its focus on neighborhoods makes it a particularly valuable tool for law-enforcement agencies that want to understand the concerns of particular areas in a city.
[For more of this story, written by Kaveh Waddell, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...lice-seattle/481164/]
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