Adrian Holovaty has some diverse skills: he's a journalist -- the editor of washingtonpost.com; a Web programmer -- he created one of the first Google mashups; and an entrepreneur. Oh, and he is only 28 years old.He also started EveryBlock, a site that provides local news that got funding from a grant from the Knight Foundation. This week, Holovaty sold EveryBlock to MSNBC.com, which is a joint venture between Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and GE (NYSE: GE). The purchase price was not disclosed.
Currently, EveryBlock has coverage of 15 U.S. sites. The services users can find there includes civic information (crimes, building permits and restaurant inspections), news articles and blogs (aggregated from a myriad of sources) and fun things (photos, lost-and-found postings and so on). To get at this information, users simply enter a street address of ZIP code. It's known as hyperlocal.
Interestingly enough, MSNBC.com is already the #1 news site, beating out biggies like CNN.com. Yet, to enhance its leadership position, it will need to differentiate its offerings, and moving into hyperlocal should help out. MSNBC.com will likely get more engagement from users as well as build up a treasure-trove of valuable data. At the same time, the local news space is poised for change, in light of the tumultuous change with local newspapers.
According to Holovaty's blog post: "Our site is very young -- it's only been live for about a year and a half -- and we have a lot of ideas and expansion plans. I often tell friends and industry colleagues that EveryBlock in is current incarnation is only about five percent of what we want to do with it. We're now in a position to make this happen."
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The IPO Primer and The Complete M&A Handbook
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