Neighbourly is an app by Google that helps you get local information about the things around you. Be it safety of a particular area or the best food in a particular restaurant, Neighbourly puts you in charge of helping out your neighbours and it is expanding to more cities in India
The Neighbourly app was launched in India first in Mumbai followed by Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Mysore, Vizag, Kochi, and Coimbatore. As the name suggests, the app is all about helping your neighbours. If you are looking for a safe park for your kids to play in your area or looking for a good restaurant serving south Indian food, or looking for the best place to chill with friends in the evening, Neighbourly is the app for you. It will broadcast your questions to your “neighbours” and you will receive recommendations from real people. Starting today, Neighbourly will be available in Delhi and Bengaluru, and will roll out to other cities including Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Indore and more soon. Google says that users outside these cities can bring Neighbourly to their city faster by joining the waitlist.
Ben Fohner, Senior Product Manager, on Google’s Next Billion Users team said, “We’re committed to bringing the Internet alive for everyone in India, make it more useful for a billion Indians who speak in local Indian languages. We want to fill the hyper-local information gap that exists today and that’s why we launched Neighbourly earlier this year. In our research, we've found that most of life happens within a 1km radius of where you live. We’ve also found that when finding local information, people prefer to ask or discuss with another person. Neighbourly makes it easy to seek advice and recommendations from neighbours who know the area and have similar tastes. That’s why we built Neighbourly, that’s why people use it, and that’s why we’re so excited to make it available to everybody across India.”
Neighbourly isn’t limited to the neighbourhood you live in. If you live work far from home, you can switch between the two neighbourhoods. In fact, Google says that you can have multiple neighbourhoods. You can also see better questions just for you. Every time you open Neighbourly, you’ll see the best questions from your neighbourhood. The more you use Neighbourly, the more personalized it becomes. If you aren’t receiving answers to your questions, then worry not. The app will send you a notification with some advice on how to best ask them again. Also, if you’re among the most helpful in your neighbourhood, you can earn Top Neighbour status. Top Neighbours help pick the best questions in your neighbourhood and also identify the ones that don’t meet the “Neighbourly Promise”.
If you are one that likes your privacy, then worry not. You don’t need to reveal yourself to your neighbours to ask a question. “Ask and answer questions without sharing your private details” is how Google puts it.
In the good old days, you would physically ask your neighbours for advice on paces to go or good restaurants or to simply borrow a bowl of sugar. It looks like those days are behind us and we resort to apps to help us make every decision including ordering that bowl of sugar home. With neighbourly, we are getting back to a human connect even though you may not know the person at the other end giving you restaurant advice.
If you are interested in downloading the Neighbourly app, you can do so here. The app was last updated on 21 November 2018 and has an install base of more than 10,00,000.
Follow Us
Digit NewsDesk
Digit News Desk writes news stories across a range of topics. Getting you news updates on the latest in the world of tech. View Full Profile
