nexy

Use case

neighbourhood chat that only works where you live

Most neighbourhood groups fill with posts from people who moved away years ago, and asking a question means telling strangers your name before anyone has decided to help. Nexy gives you a chat that only exists while you are physically there, where questions start anonymous and names only appear when someone responds.

You join a neighbourhood chat when you are physically in the area, and it disappears from your list when you leave. Questions you post are anonymous until someone replies, at which point both names drop at once and only for the two of you, and nobody installs anything or makes an account to participate.

Try this in Nexy, freeStarts on the web. The other person installs nothing.

What it looks like

An anonymous question that became a named conversation only when someone chose to answer

How to do it

  1. You arrive in a neighbourhood and Nexy adds that area's chat to your list based on your location.
  2. You send a question or offer to the neighbourhood, and it appears anonymously to everyone in the area.
  3. Someone responds, and at that moment both names are revealed but only to each other, never to the whole group.
  4. The conversation continues between the two of you, and everyone else still sees the original post as anonymous.
  5. You move away or leave the area, and the neighbourhood chat disappears from your list completely.

Why it works

Membership is presenceYou are in the chat because you are physically there, not because you joined three years ago. Leave the area and it leaves your list, so the group only contains people who can actually walk to the corner shop.
Anonymous until usefulYour question goes out without your name attached. When someone decides to answer, both names drop at once and only for those two people. Nobody else sees who asked or who responded.
No distance shownThe chat reaches the whole neighbourhood, never a radius, and never tells you how far away someone is. You are either in the area or you are not.
Names only when earnedThe person who answers your question learns your name at the moment they reply, not before. This is not a setting you toggle, it is how the mechanism works.
Nothing stays behindWhen you leave the area, the chat is gone from your list. You do not carry around fifteen neighbourhood groups from places you used to live.

Where it stops

These are not missing features, they are refusals that make the tool work.

No permanent membershipYou cannot stay in a neighbourhood chat after you move away, because a group where half the members live somewhere else is not a neighbourhood.
No radius or distanceIt does not tell you someone is 200 metres away or let you adjust how far the message reaches, because a neighbourhood is a place, not a circle drawn on a map.
No visible question historyWhen you join, you see only what has been posted since you arrived — it does not show you six months of previous questions from people who are no longer there.
No broadcast namesYour name is never announced to the whole neighbourhood — it only appears to the person you are talking to, after one of you has responded to the other.
No choose-your-areaYou cannot manually join a neighbourhood you want to follow from across town, because membership is presence and presence is not a preference.

Questions people ask

How does a neighbourhood chat work where membership is automatic based on where I actually live and disappears when I move away?

Nexy adds the neighbourhood chat to your list when you are physically in the area. You see posts from others who are also there, and you can send questions or offers to the group. When you move away or leave the area, the chat disappears from your list completely. There is no join button, no invitation link, and no way to stay in the group once you are gone. Membership is pure presence.

What happens when I ask a question in the neighbourhood chat, does everyone see my name immediately or does it stay private somehow?

Your question appears anonymously to everyone in the neighbourhood. When someone decides to reply, both names drop at once — yours becomes visible to them, and theirs becomes visible to you. Nobody else in the group sees who asked or who answered. The link between question and answer is not stored afterward, so there is nothing to hand over later. Anonymous means anonymous, not hidden-but-recorded.

Do people in the neighbourhood have to install an app or make an account to see my question and respond to it?

No. They get one message in the chat they already use — WhatsApp, SMS, or whatever channel the neighbourhood uses. If they want to respond, they reply in that same thread. There is no app to download, no account to create, no portal to log into. From their side it looks like a group chat that only exists while they live there, and from your side it works the same way.

How does Nexy know what counts as my neighbourhood, and can I adjust the boundary or the radius to include more streets?

Nexy defines the neighbourhood as a place, not a radius you can adjust. You do not draw a circle on a map or choose how many streets to include. Reach is always the whole neighbourhood, never a distance measurement, and it never shows you how far away someone is. You are either in the area or you are not, and that boundary is the same for everyone.

If I respond to someone's question in the neighbourhood chat, does my name get broadcast to everyone who saw the original post?

No. Your name is revealed only to the person who asked the question, at the moment you respond. Everyone else still sees the original post as anonymous. The conversation continues between the two of you, and the rest of the neighbourhood cannot see who is talking. There is no public acknowledgment, no list of responders, no way for others to see that you were the one who answered.

What happens to the neighbourhood chat if I go on holiday or leave the area temporarily, does it stay in my list or disappear?

It disappears from your list when you leave the area. The chat only exists while you are physically there, so if you go on holiday or move across town, it is gone. When you return, it reappears. There is no archive, no way to check what you missed, no option to stay connected remotely. The chat is tied to presence, not preference.

Can I see the history of previous questions people asked in the neighbourhood before I arrived, or do I only see new posts from now on?

You only see posts from the moment you arrive. Nexy does not show you six months of old questions from people who no longer live there. What happened before you joined is not part of your context, because the chat is for the people who are currently present, not an archive of everything that was ever said.

How does Nexy prevent spam or unwanted messages in a neighbourhood chat where anyone in the area can post anonymously?

The chat is reachable by anyone physically present in the neighbourhood, which is free. Being found by strangers — having messages arrive from outside the area — is the paid side, and a receptionist always sits in front of any inbound route. That makes spam structurally impossible rather than filtered. Someone in the neighbourhood can post anonymously, but they must be in the neighbourhood, and anonymous does not mean untraceable if the post is abusive.

Do this with Nexy

Start free on the web. Tell Nexy what the two of you agreed on and it takes it from there: it asks, reminds whoever still has to act, and tells everyone when it is done.

Start free

No app needed to begin, and nothing at all for the other person.

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A neighbourhood chat that only works where you live