Forum

Since APN launched in 2014, new competitors have appeared – in particular, the US-based neighbourhood network Nextdoor, whose aggressive marketing and widespread coverage presents a challenge to sites such as ours. This discussion on Harringay Online (HoL) – the Big Daddy of Haringey community websites - illustrates the issues, with its adminstrator, Hugh, saying:

Whether you're in Harringay, Alexandra Park, Noel Park or Crouch End, vote with your fingers and stick with your truly local community website. At HoL we'll never use, abuse or profit from your data and community will always come first, not profit!*

He mentions profit because although Nextdoor like to present themselves as all about kindly neighbourliness, they are in fact a giant American Corporation like Google or Facebook which is profiting massively from those who use it. When it was floated on the stockmarket last year, it was valued at $4.3bn, and its revenue was $59m in the last quarter from advertisements on its site (which are interspersed with, and look like, ordinary posts), as well as from selling harvested data to advertisers (see their Member Agreement). Small fry relative to the likes of other surveillance capitalists such as Facebook, but the data is if anything more valuable to businesses, because it includes physical addresses (now without house numbers). Perhaps the attractions of this money-spinner explains why Facebook is now launching Facebook Neighbourhoods.

So APN does not harvest its members’ data to sell to businesses - and nor do our hosts, Ning, who are just a platform like Wordpress. There are other things that APN can offer that Nextdoor does not:

• The administrators of APN are just local residents, so you can tell us changes which you think need to be made - including the format of the site, as well as how it is run! Should only members be able to view the site? Should we charge an annual subscription? We also keep a close eye on activities on the site – in particular, self-recommendations by tradespeople and substantial businesses is not tolerated (but we do support local businesses – e.g. with our Hidden High Street page – and welcome posts about local courses/markets/stalls/services). New members must at least know the neighbourhood (so grandma in Scotland is welcome to join the site to keep up with what is going on in her grandchildren’s neighbourhood).
• Nextdoor no longer lists events – so to get your or others’ local events noticed, APN is a good bet (click on the grey button labelled Add an Event post at the top of the home page to do this).
• It is easy to find posts on a particular topic on APN because they are allocated categories defined by us. To find, for example, all posts concerning planning applications, or transport, click on the appropriate category (listed along the top of the Forum page - click on More at far right to display more - and also down the right sidebar of the same page). This is why you have to choose one or more categories when you add a post to the site. Let us know if you have suggestions about the categories.
• All posts concerning recommended tradespeople should be in addition tagged to indicate which trade they concern – so you can click on the tag plumber, to retrieve those posts focusing on plumbers (click on the big blue button labelled Recommended Tradespeople on the left sidebar of the home page – there’s a link to this for mobiles from the top of the home page).
• We are a community on the ground as well as online, and have occasional get-togethers in person (more are planned!).
• We occasionally have particular projects – such as the Streets Survey of 2019 (sorted comments are displayed here), run together with Palace Gates Residents Association, and the successful campaign to stop Alexandra Ward being abolished (now Alexandra Park ward).

Do let users of APN know your views on the relative virtues/vices of various websites that local people use for matters of local interest. Which are the most useful/friendly/constructive/easiest to use/informative etc? You can also contact Admin by personal message on the site (mailbox icon at top right), or email alexparkn@gmail.com.

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* You can access other sites in our family of local community websites in Haringey – and join them! They all look similar because they use the same hosting platform, Ning (Harringay Online, Bowes and Bounds Connected, Noel Park net; the Crouch End site is sadly no more). Not forgetting the excellent Palmers Green Community website in Enfield, which was created from scratch by its administrator.