The Facebook Neighborhood Product had a newsfeed just like FB Groups or FB home tab. To help provide value to the user that would spark more visits and time spent on the product a Neighborhood bulletin was created. The idea was that users could come here to see relevant local news in their neighborhoods. This was a unique element because it how it generated information was a hybrid between a group of user admins and AI. Users would be able to come here and lean about a new business that opened, or learn about local politics, or discover a new fact or location in their neighborhood.

Neighborhood Bulletin Admin

The prodouct programing would generate potential posts for the bulletin and it would need a majority vote of good information from the Neighborhood admins to then appear on the bulletin. This means a lot of responsibility from these admin users who would act as gate keepers of useful information. The group of admin would have to be divers, and consistent, and not have any history of posting offensive or inappropriate content. Based on these and other cadentials, the program would notify and invite a user to be a Bulletin Admin. Below is is a Bulletin review flow that an onboarded admin would experience.

Admins also had the ability to propose content to be posted to the bulletin that would have to be approved by one other admine before it was posted. Specific groups such as school districts or City planning could be selected as content sourse that the AI could pull or forward proposal posts for Review.

UGC was the Key

After launching the core neighborhood product in a town in Canada, we quickly discovered that the lifeblood of the product was user-generated content (UGC). Through interviewing users and collaboration, we created a strategy to promote UGC. To prompt users to post and ask questions, provide recommendations, and engage in, or start, conversations, we had to be conscious of a couple of things. Sending too many notifications to the user could backfire, causing them to ignore them, turning the product into a ghost town. We also needed to quickly design and ship these engagement features, which meant we had to repurpose existing components.

With those constraints, we created the place poll, which allowed users to vote for, add a favorite place, preview the area and share a tip about it. We also created a Neighborhood bulletin that had new information about the Neighborhood and local news daily.

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The Privacy Challenge

One of the technical issues that we needed to overcome was figuring out the privacy model. Typically this model is centered on the individual user, Facebook Friends, and choosing which users could see your post. The Neighborhood model was not focused on individuals but instead on a geographic area. The challenge was introducing a new sharing concept to the product user. How would we make it easy for people to adjust which neighborhoods show up in their feed, and in turn, see the user’s neighborhood posts?

The Approach

Our first solution allowed the user to choose from a list of surrounding neighborhoods. We wanted to give as much power to the user as possible when deciding which areas they wanted to participate in. The downfall to this was it created a complex privacy model making it challenging to use. We also discovered that people weren’t very familiar with all of the sub-neighborhoods in their city. Without a map, this made users overthink the model and become confused.

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Through interviews and user testing, we discovered that the best approach was simplifying the model. Instead of allowing the users to choose individual Neighborhoods, we lumped them into one option to include surrounding neighborhoods using one button. Users could now decide if they want to share with just their home neighborhood or all surrounding neighborhoods. This change was well-received in testing. Most users understood the benefit of opting into surrounding neighborhoods, even without a visual aid of a map. We still showed the names of the surrounding areas, but they were no longer distracting the user.

Neighborhood Groups

One of the biggest successes was seamlessly incorporating FB groups into the product without changing the user’s privacy settings with each post. This achievement was a massive success because many users currently use community groups as a supplement for the Neighborhoods product. By simplifying the privacy model, many users can now use community groups along with the Neighborhoods product. Users can enjoy their already established groups on the Neighborhoods surface, and by using the tools, they are empowered to create an even stronger community.

One of the biggest successes was seamlessly incorporating FB groups into the product without changing the user’s privacy settings with each post. This achievement was a massive success because many users currently use community groups as a supplement for the Neighborhoods product. By simplifying the privacy model, many users can now use community groups along with the Neighborhoods product. Users can enjoy their already established groups on the Neighborhoods surface, and by using the tools, they are empowered to create an even stronger community.

Many who have interacted with the product have been excited about it and can’t wait until it’s available for their neighborhood. So much time and energy went into cultivating a safe space for everyone in a community to express themselves and feel like they’re making a contribution. The tools that we gave users allowed them to communicate easily while strongly encouraging users to accept those with different backgrounds and create unity.