In a blog post March 10, the company headlined this new crowdsourcing tool. Insights gleaned from locally created polls are potentially sizable for the hundreds of governments nationwide that tap into the platform via Nextdoor’s government dashboard — a platform that protects resident privacy while allowing agencies and departments to share information, and respond and draw feedback in a targeted way.
“We’re excited to announce the release of Nextdoor Polls, which allows Nextdoor members to quickly ask their neighbors questions and quantify the results,” wrote Nextdoor’s Senior Product Manager Morgan Hallmon in a company blog.
Analytics and analysis from the polling data could yield new windows into community concerns, both in specific issues and when aggregated for demographic insights on a regional level.
Upon this feature's release, government access to such polling information is yet to be officially determined; however, it seems possible that Nextdoor might allow some form of controlled access. Hallmon said that already the feature has been built with privacy in mind.
“All responses to the polls are completely anonymous, which allows polls to be used for a wide variety of applications,” Hallmon said, though he did not specify what these applications could be.
The Nextdoor Poll feature currently has two different formats for its users: voting and straw polls. Results can be shared inside and outside of a neighborhood and posted within the platform’s social media stream.
