A new social media site called Nextdoor has been growing in popularity around Marin. This site offers a way for Redwood students to become more involved in their community, and connect with local Marin parents willing to hire teens from the local community.
Nextdoor started out as a small beta website with only 176 neighborhoods involved. CEO Nirav Tolia, a San Francisco technology entrepreneur, has now expanded the site to about 15,000 users nationally.
As the number of members in Greenbrae alone has reached 809, the site also expanded its uses. Many members have began to use Nextdoor to post items for sale, report suspicious activity, discuss unusual animal sightings, and advertise teen job opportunities.
“It is almost a mini Craigslist for individual neighborhoods,” said Heather McPhail-Sridharan, a Kentfield resident.
Since being introduced in Marin by McPail-Sridharan, Nextdoor has become widely popular as it has expanded to over 50 neighborhoods in the county alone according to recent polls. After hearing about the site in a Wall Street Journal Article, McPhail-Shiridan told many of her friends and neighbors about the site as she thought the website would be a good addition for Marin communities.
“Nextdoor is good because it is a cross generational thing, literally everyone is on the site,” McPhail-Sridharan said.
Teens from the Marin area are using Nextdoor to make money after school and on weekends. Parents post opportunities like, “looking for babysitter tomorrow night,” or “need my lawn mowed this weekend, will pay $20.”
Sophomore Keely Jenkins was first introduced to the site when she had seen on her mother’s account that teens in her neighborhood had used Nextdoor to connect with parents looking for high school students to babysit. Since seeing these posts, Jenkins said she has used Nextdoor to find babysitting jobs on her free weeknights.
Senior Samantha Aiello also uses Nextdoor to earn money in the community. Aiello has retained seven babysitting jobs with parents throughout the community since being introduced the site.
Other Redwood students have also used the site to find other jobs such as, lawn mowing, driving neighbors junk to the dump, WiFi rewiring, and lifeguarding jobs at community events.
After a string of Marin robberies in December of 2012, the number of Nextdoor users quadrupled in less than a week. As citizens wanted more information about the recent crimes, more and more communities in Marin joined that month.
