Today we are pleased to announce a new way to exchange time-sensitive information with your neighbors.
Normally, when a member posts a message on their Nextdoor website, their neighbors are notified by email. For especially time-sensitive information, this may not be fast enough.
To help in these cases, we have added a new “urgent alerts” capability. An urgent alert is a special type of post that reaches members immediately via mobile phone text message and email. It’s intended for the rare cases where information is very important and time-sensitive, such as:
- Criminal activity
- Missing children
- Fires, floods or other disasters
- Local evacuations
We hope your neighborhood never needs to use this capability, but we’ve added it to Nextdoor just in case. When things like this do happen, it helps to get the word out to the neighborhood so that everyone has accurate and timely information.
To receive urgent alerts from your neighbors via text message, you’ll need to add your mobile phone number to your account (your phone number is kept private and only used for urgent alerts). By default, you’ll also receive urgent alerts by email.
To send an alert, visit your Nextdoor website and click the “Send alert” link on the top right of the homepage, near where you’d normally add a post.
Since urgent alerts must fit within a mobile phone text message, they should be short updates (at most 110 characters).
Sending your alert will notify your neighbors via email and text message.
Have questions? Check out the alerts FAQ, or email us at support@nextdoor.com. Also, we appreciate hearing any comments you have on urgent alerts – please send them to us here.
Cheers,
Madison, Product Team
