Neighborhood social networking app Nextdoor expands into France

By Eric Auchard

LONDON (Reuters) - Nextdoor, a social network that acts as an alternative to industry giant Facebook by linking up neighbors rather than friends or colleagues, will launch in France on Thursday.

Members can use the San Francisco-based company's mobile app and website to ask their neighbors for advice on everything from babysitters to organizing local sports clubs or how to contend with household rodent invasions.

Founded in 2011, Nextdoor drew in 12 million unique monthly visitors in the United States last month, according to app measurement firm SimilarWeb, and France will be its fourth European market.

It began testing in 200 neighborhoods in Paris early in January ahead of Thursday's official launch across France, where it calculates 40,000 distinct neighborhoods exist.

Nextdoor has taken off in the Netherlands where it launched in 2016, followed by Britain later that year.

In the Netherlands, Nextdoor attracted 240,000 unique visitors to Nextdoor.nl in December, SimilarWeb data shows. It ranked among the top 10 social networks, according to data from AppAnnie, which measures mobile downloads.

In Britain there were 655,000 unique visitors to Nextdoor in December 2017 according to SimilarWeb.

It also launched in Germany in mid 2017 (http://reut.rs/2rTIDs5), but has yet to draw in many members, independent data sources show. The company does not publish its own membership data and declined to comment on user figures by country.

The Nextdoor service is free for users in European markets, with no sponsored advertising. It began testing sponsored advertising in the United States last year.

The firm has raised more than $285 million in funding from major venture investors including Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Tiger Global Management, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, according to Crunchbase data.

(Reporting by Eric Auchard; Editing by Susan Fenton)

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