MSNBC buys neighbourhood news aggregator EveryBlock

EveryBlock, the 'street level' news and information aggregator, has been bought by MSNBC.

The site will retain its domain, logo and team of six staff, founder Adrian Holovaty announced in a blog post.

The partnership with MSNBC.com means the site will continue to run even though its funding, a two-year Knight Foundation grant, finished at the end of June.

EveryBlock, which was launched in January 2008, currently has sites covering 15 US cities, allowing users to search for news items by address, postcode or neighbourhood.

Results of news searches can be displayed on interactive maps and turned into a dedicated feed for that area.

News articles, blog entries, images and local authority information are collected by the sites, which can also be browsed by news topics and neighbourhood.

The tie-up will enable EveryBlock to 'expand profoundly', said Holovaty, who added that the current incarnation of the site is only 'five per cent of what we want to do with it'.

"MSNBC.com is the most-visited news website in the US and is in solid financial shape in a time when news organizations around the world are struggling. We're excited about the possibilities of pointing a massive audience at EveryBlock and having the resources to beef up our technological infrastructure and staff," he said.

The site has previously partnered with the New York Times to expand its local political news coverage and the Chicago Tribune to map local news items.

EveryBlock currently accepts contributions of news and information from local bloggers and questions about the future of this arrangement under the new deal have been raised.

Reflecting on its links with local media, MSNBC.com's Cory Bergman, who also runs neighbourhood news network Next Door Media, wrote on his Lost Remote site: "Our plan is not to compete with the local news ecosystem, but identify ways to reinforce it.  After all, data complements coverage."

On June 30 EveryBlock made the code behind the service open-source. The deal with MSNBC will not affect this release, Holovaty confirmed.

In January this year, NBC, one half of the Microsoft-NBC partnership that makes up MSNBC.com, signed up local news aggregator Outside.in to feed its neighbourhood news sections on its network of newly launch hyperlocal sites.

Yesterday's announcement by EveryBlock and MSNBC was followed by news from Microsoft that it had entered a partnership with Advance Internet, publisher of Newhouse Newspapers' websites, for local and search advertising.

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