Comments on: Msnbc.com Acquires EveryBlock… Welcome Brother!

By: Snowflake Seven

Snowflake Seven — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:09:38 +0000

MSNBC surely has a number of strategies for leveraging the infrastructure that is EveryBlock, but the first thing that comes to mind is getting a toe-hold in the local newspaper market.

MSNBC bought Newsvine a little while back. Take the Newsvine user-base (aka columnists) and provide them a tool for doing local “investigation” into their neighborhoods.

You get a recipe for building a crowd-sourced local “newspaper” were the “reporters” are invested in talking about themselves and are constantly fed new data about their immediate surroundings.

And as Newsvine is vote-based news ranking service, the best local writing bubbles up (in theory) providing a more personal competitor to news wire services like the AP.

Or did MSNBC just commandeer the ship to put the sailors into service making custom street map flyovers for Countdown?

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:16:10 +0000

@Mike D.

Sounds like you had a say in the MSNBC acquistion of EveryBlock :)

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:02:19 +0000

Hi Tim. Reasonable question. I wouldn’t say there isn’t a revenue model, as targeted local advertising is some of the most valuable advertising there is, but yes, the revenue is not significant at this point. As for the open source thing, it is our belief that some of the value is in the code that has already been written and open sourced, but most of the value moving forward is with the talented team who wrote the code to begin with.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:54:26 +0000

I’m curious to know how a company without a revenue model, who also required by their original grant, had to open source their underlining technology … was able to justify a Purchase Price.

By: Grab the .net » Everyblock & Foursquare

Grab the .net » Everyblock & Foursquare — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:17:41 +0000

[...] I have decided to add two new applications to my iPhone. The first is Foursquare and the second is Everyblock. Both are focused on leveraging ‘local’ content. MSNBC has recently acquired Everyblock. [...]

By: Rex

Rex — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:55:40 +0000

Sweet. Nice move.