Facebook Wants You to Meet All of Your Nosy Neighbors with This New Feature

Facebook Neighbourhoods 1 Credit: Jesse Hollington
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Facebook announced that a brand new feature is coming to the popular social network. Now users from Canada and some cities in the U.S., like San Diego, can create a separate profile, become part of their neighborhood, and join other nearby neighborhoods. 

This feature will be similar to the popular social network Nextdoor, which also aims to create digital communities with local neighbors.

How Will Facebook Neighborhoods Work?

As mentioned before, Neighborhoods will let you create a separate profile within the Facebook app that’ll be distinct from your regular account. You can choose to add your interests, favorite places, and a small bio to let people using Neighborhoods get to know you.

You can join either your own neighborhood or nearby neighborhoods, share your interests, write posts, and ask or answer questions in the Neighborhoods Questions feed.

There’ll also be options for you to join or create local groups. Or, if you already have a Facebook group, you can add it into Neighborhoods so people living in the area can find it easily

Facebook’s Neighborhoods will also have a Recommendations feature where you can find or suggest your favorite restaurants, parks, or places in your local area.

Safety and Privacy

Neighborhoods will feature guidelines and moderators to keep the posts and comments on the feed safe and friendly. If you find any posts that go against these guidelines or you feel it’s violating Facebook’s community standards, Neighborhoods will also have a reporting tool you can use.

Likewise, Facebook’s Neighborhoods will keep private information to a minimum and will let you decide how much optional information you’ll share. That doesn’t include your name, profile, and cover photo from your Facebook profile or the name of your neighborhood.

Also, as you’d expect from Facebook, the company states that your activity and information from using this feature may be used to personalize your experience across Facebook products. Meaning, Facebook might use your activity and information to show you targeted ads. Although, that might not be as easy anymore thanks to Apple’s latest iOS 14.5 software update.

Where Is Neighborhoods Available?

As of right now, Facebook is just starting to test out this new feature, so don’t expect it to be fully available anytime soon.

As of right now, the Neighborhoods feature is available in Canada and will begin to roll out in select cities of the United States soon.

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