

MSNBC.com acquires EveryBlock - rmanocha
http://blog.everyblock.com/2009/aug/17/acquisition/

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

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iamelgringo
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.

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jhancock
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.

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leviathant
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.

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brandnewlow
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?

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

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ubernostrum
"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.

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siculars
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.

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adamhowell
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.

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jimmybot
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.

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vidar
Has anyone heard the price?

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adamhowell
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.

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tptacek
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.

~~~
brandnewlow
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...](http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090817/more-local-heat-msnbccom-
buys-everyblock/)

