ROANOKE (WSLS) The city of Roanoke is now part of the free private social networking website, Nextdoor.com.
Residents can sign up on the site to receive updates from the city for their neighborhood on crime prevention, emergency notifications and other safety alerts.
So far more than 2,600 residents use the site allowing the city to target specific areas when sending out information.
"You can go in a send specific messages to different areas in the city and the thing that's different from Nextdoor and Facebook is when you send those messages it's going to everybody that may not like your page. Nextdoor is going to everybody that is signed up in the area that you send messages to and that is crucial if we have street paving or trash collection issues," said Tim Martin, the city's media coordinator.
South Roanoke, Old Southwest and Raleigh Court are just some of the neighborhoods with the largest amount users.