What were those bangs?
The car alarm. A bang. You look out, see nothing. The neighbours heard the same thing — but the group you never started doesn't help at two in the morning.
You hear it. A bang. A car alarm. Something that doesn’t belong on this street at this hour. You go to the window, see nothing, and go back to bed. Tomorrow you might ask someone in the stairwell. Usually you don’t. And you never find out what it was.
Five flats heard the same thing. Nobody knew the others had.
The sign in the flowerbed isn’t enough
Neighbourhood watch is a good idea that usually stops at a sign, a Facebook group nobody checks, or an email from the housing association. It works when someone has time the next day. It rarely works at two in the morning, when you can still see something — or tell that it was only fireworks.
The problem isn’t willingness. It’s that the conversation isn’t where the event is.
The group you already have is the wrong group
Plenty of streets already have a chat. It’s closed, which is the point — and also the problem. The person who moved in last autumn isn’t in it. The person who heard the bangs from the other side of the street isn’t in it. And the people who are get the ping mixed in with three weeks of jumble-sale posts.
An open thread on social media isn’t better. Then anyone can read it. Exactly what you don’t want when it concerns which flats are empty over Easter.
What you actually want to know
You rarely need an investigation. You want three things, quickly:
- Did anyone else hear that?
- Was it fireworks, a crash, or something else?
- Does someone need to look out — or can we go back to sleep?
Same with the van: someone sees it while it’s still there, not three hours later in a post.
How we think about tojo
The street gets a public chat. It shows up for whoever is nearby, so new neighbours can find their way in. Underneath it you create private, hidden chats for what only you should see: neighbourhood watch, the jumble sale, the stairwell.
Then the car alarm doesn’t share a thread with buy-and-sell. The person across the street can reply “fireworks, I saw them” without being in the neighbourhood watch. Empty flats over Easter stay in the private chat — it doesn’t show on the map to whoever is just walking past.
The app isn’t out yet. If you want to hear the day it goes live, join the waitlist — we’ll write then, and not otherwise.