MSNBC.com acquires EveryBlock | Hacker News Reader

MSNBC.com acquires EveryBlock

blog.everyblock.com

88 pointsrmanocha15 comments

Also at http://www.holovaty.com/writing/everyblock-acquisition/ with some more personal details from Adrian

Is it just me, or did the acquisition market recently start to pick up steam again? First Friendfeed and now Everyblock. Seems like its more than just the stock market that's starting to look more rosey.

When pg release his first RFP yesterday http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html my first thought was everyblock has the best shot at doing something in this space. So a YC oriented plan might be to build around/on where everyblock has succeeded.

There goes the neighborhood. I'm not sure what value MSNBC can bring to Everyblock, except, well, cash. And they're not going to pour money into an operation without the expectation of return on investment, which they'll want sooner than later, and which - call me a cynic - will inevitably lead to a reduction or outright elimination of the original staff, and dilution of the effectiveness of the original product/application.

I do hope that in a few years, someone can point me to this post and tell me I was being too cynical, but the pattern seems all too familiar. It was nice while it lasted.

Interesting angles:

1. NBC has recently rolled out a network of local sites, NBCChicago.com, for example. These sites are using data from Fred Wilson's Outside.in, an EB competitor. Will they roll with Everyblock data now? I'm not quite sure what the relationship between them and MSNBC is. It could be quite tenuous from what I can tell.

2. If the code was open-sourced, what was sold?

The brand, the domain, the eyeballs, the data, the deployment environment, and (of course) the team.

"and (of course) the team"

This is something that can't be overstated. OK, yeah, I'm biased; I know and have worked alongside several of the folks at EveryBlock, but I doubt you're going to find a better group of designers/developers available for building this sort of service.

Sure, the code's open source, but it only exists at all because these guys have been in the trenches for years, wrangling things that can take years off your life and turning some of the crappiest, gnarliest data sources in the world into useful, well-designed data-browsing interfaces. Access to that sort of concentrated experience/expertise is worth quite a bit of money all by itself, never mind the other stuff MSNBC gets out of this deal.

good for them! i was at the nytimes open event a few months back and everyblock/microlocal news reporting was definitely something on the radar amongst attendees and people at the times. glad to see an major news operator 'get it' and get behind something innovative and new.

Yeah, but...

This might just be me being cynical, but unless MSNBC really tries to innovate and make money selling Everyblock's aggregated data or something, they'll just end up slapping ads all over it.

And since, at least in its present form, it both requires lots of up-front work and manpower to start up each new local area (have to scrape brand new local gov't sites every time, etc.) and isn't a site that's going to pull in huge traffic numbers (meaning news that's more in-depth than celebrities and political FUD) -- if it ends up never making money, the core team will either leave after a couple of years of frustration or be absorbed into other projects, and Everyblock will fade away.

Again, probably just me being cynical, but I love the idea of data as news and was really hoping they'd be able to do something a little more independent than this.

Really? Is MSNBC still owned by Microsoft? When it comes to the Internet, Microsoft seems like one of those companies that really doesn't mind investing lots of money for a long time as long as they hold a glimmer of hope.

Has anyone heard the price?

I may be way off, but my guess is not much more than generous signing bonuses.

The site makes no money and their grant ended June 30, so I'm sure MSNBC had almost all the leverage.

That assumes that MSNBC wasn't the best of multiple offers. It's not hard to believe that EB could have scored term sheets. It's an impressive and sticky site.

All Things D says "several million" and then quotes the recent Patch acquisition at $10 million, which is their way of saying it's more than that. http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090817/more-local-heat-msnbccom...

I'd say the leverage lies with EveryBlock given that MSNBC did not have to buy them.

And if there were competing offers or options available to EB, all the more likely that they weren't picked up on the cheap.

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