9 ms·
Farewell, neighbors
- mshron 14y agoEveryblock was a great way to find out about what was going on in my neighborhood. I wish they had given a little more warning; I would have gone back and read some things before they closed their doors. Then again, hard to complain about such an excellent free service. They lost their founder only a few months ago. I have no inside information, but I can't imagine that this is unrelated. I wish the whole team the best of luck! They did a great job with Everyblock. I hope they do something else amazing soon.
- pdovy 14y agoThis is really too bad, this was a great site and there doesn't really seem to be anything else like it out there. I'm surprised they couldn't come up with a way to make this profitable - and the closure is pretty sudden, wonder what the back story is there. My neighorhood in Chicago used this pretty extensively and it really helped keep people connected and aware of what was going on. Sad to see that go.
- ianb 14y agoThis site has seen a little traction in my neighborhood (which surprised me because there's also a mailing list that about 20% of the neighborhood is subscribed to): https://nextdoor.com https://nextdoor.com – it seems well executed. None of the aggregation stuff Everyblock did, though.
- bhousel 14y agoWhere I live (northern NJ) everyone knows about and uses Patch. Even non-techy people. I'm really impressed by how quickly they've become the go-to source for local news.
- smackfu 14y agoYeah, Patch hit on a pretty big gap in the news market. The bigger newspapers cut and cut on local reporters, to the point where a daily newspaper might have a half-dozen local stories covering their very large coverage area. Patch can start a micro-site, have someone write an article or two about that town each day, and be much more interesting to people.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- carlosreyes 14y agoFounder's been gone since August of 2012. I wish they'd given more of an explanation behind closing. As of this blogpost: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/goodbye-everyblock/ http://www.holovaty.com/writing/goodbye-everyblock/ it seems they were optimistic. Sad to see his writing about acquisitions within today's context.
- uptown 14y agoI'm really stunned by this news - I've always been inspired by what Paul and Adrian created - but I think a news organization was a misaligned parent-company for this kind of site. My "side project" has been working on something in a similar space, so I hope somebody publishes a post-mortem. Truly sorry to see everyblock go.
- brador 14y agoStartups, please don't do this. Users can become surprisingly dependent on your site, give a week warning before closing out if you can. It's not too much to ask and gives users time to prepare, move data, swap contact details, backup and such.
- tbatterii 14y agothis assumes the startup in question has some sort of control over the situation. I bet that isn't always the case. I'm sure ideally everyblock would have liked to wind things down a little less abruptly, but sometimes, reality sucks.
- dharris 14y agoa) It can be too much to ask. They owe you nothing. b) EveryBlock was bought by NBC. They're hardly a startup anymore. c) If the service is free, watch your stuff. This sort of thing WILL happen. cf. http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
- brk 14y agoUsers, please don't become highly dependent on "free" sites with no obvious or proven business model.
- smackfu 14y agoDid they not have ads? Because "free with ads" supports most of the internet, and I don't think anyone can tell which things they should rely on and which they can't. I mean, once they were bought by NBC, they din't seem any less dependable than MSNBC or such.
- geoffw8 14y agoWhy should a user know about a sites business model? To an average joe you letting me sign up and do stuff is all I know. While "giving a week" isn't a rule, it sure sounds like it might be the nicer thing to do. You spout your answer like its the obvious and "derrr" response, but in all reality its not the users responsibility to provide longevity. And lets face it, we (startups) would be totally f'd if users didn't become entirely dependent on our services early doors, perhaps even pre-biz model.
- codegeek 14y agoThis is disappointing news. When I found out everyblock, it was exciting. I really liked the idea and in fact, had a few ideas in my own head for something similar. I really really think we need a good way to connect better with neighbors and our neighborhoods. Would love to know more details why Everyblock failed.
- danso 14y agoWhat a shame. Six months ago when Adrian Holovaty left, he told The Verge that he saw EveryBlock living for a "long, long time" and that MSNBC.com were "taking the long view on it": http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/16/3245325/5-minutes-on-the-verge-with-adrian-holovaty-founder-of-everyblock http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/16/3245325/5-minutes-on-the-v... And there was little reason to doubt him...I didn't use EB very much but it was an incredibly well executed site, in terms of its mapping and data-aggregation...it obviously lacked a strong editorial focus, but that was ostensibly something that MSNBC would've brought to it. Another thing to note: it's relatively routine to bash online startups who give less than two months warning that they're closing shop and taking all their data with them (either through a buyout or failure)...EveryBlock's owners, apparently, didn't think a day's notice was needed. Was there really no middle ground between immediate shutdown and keeping the site in low-maintenance mode? It's not like those maps and geodata go out of date quickly. ---- Edit: Just one month ago, EveryBlock had developed a new form of advertising targeted at the neighborhood level: http://blog.everyblock.com/2013/jan/07/neighbor-ads/ http://blog.everyblock.com/2013/jan/07/neighbor-ads/ I understand that a new ad service isn't just free money, per se (you need a sales staff, or at least a tech person to manage the system)...but shouldn't they wait more than 30 days to see if that is a promising, maintainable form of revenue?
- FireBeyond 14y agoHas Adrian written on why he left possibly as soon as he was able (assuming that Everyblock was acquired in "summer 2009", and many founders are tied to two year agreements to stay, and he left in August two years later)?
- danso 14y agoYes, he blogged about his leaving: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/goodbye-everyblock/ http://www.holovaty.com/writing/goodbye-everyblock/ FWIW, he left in August 2012, which would be three years after a summer 2009 acquisition. Also, he founded it back in July 2007...so when he says he "developed an uncontrollable itch to do something new", he probably meant it. Before Everyblock, he's been a pioneer in utilizing data and non-traditional journalism with news sites, most notably at the LJWorld.com...so he's been in this local online news business for quite a while. I don't think this is your usual case of a founder jumping ship just out of profit motive.
- itsmeduncan 14y agoIt is interesting to read the secret shout-outs at the bottom of the current homepage.
- mountaineer 14y agonice and thoughtful touch in an otherwise morbid page
- JeffKnol 14y agoThis seems like a great opportunity for someone to acquire basic contact information from those former EB power users posting on this blog entry, each of whom will likely be able to rally hundreds of former EB users to help you populate an EveryBlock clone you swiftly roll out. Your site could easily take off now that the niche is completely empty again. Stop whining, start coding.
- anon1385 14y agoCreating yet another centralised web app on a shoestring budget is hardly the solution here. No doubt it too would lose money and get shut down or get bought out and get shut down. Unless somebody with resources is prepared to fund/maintain it, but even then you are reliant on the goodwill, energy and money of a single person. Even charging users doesn't solve the problem of the owner just pulling the plug for whatever reason. The centralised web model is broken when it comes to any kind of services that stores significant user data (and it turns out that most things involve storing user data). If you are going to order people to start coding, at least tell them to start coding on solutions to the real problem.
- antoko 14y agoUser comment from the linked blog post found this article that gives more insight. NBC recently took full control of msnbc.com which was the parent of everyblock. I was aware of this but hadn't made the connection in this context. http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/203437/nbc-closes-hyperlocal-pioneer-everyblock/ http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/203437/nbc-clos...
- todd3834 14y agoFor anyone interested, the Knight Foundation helped fund EveryBlock with a grant that required them to open source their code. http://code.google.com/p/ebcode/ http://code.google.com/p/ebcode/ The grant required that they open source it at the end of the grant period so I wouldn't be surprised if the source code was not current but for anyone who would like to keep it alive, this would give you a major head start. Also, it appears someone already did something with the source @ http://openblockproject.org/ http://openblockproject.org/
- tmcw 14y agoThe source was dumped with no version history once in 2009. So, yes, out of date. That said, I know nothing of the conditions around this, what their plans were, and so on - so not judging. And a site like EveryBlock is less about source code and more about execution and moderation, which they did quite well for a time.
- cedrichurst 14y agoBut this code is GPLV3. It's really curious how the source code became out-of-date. Isn't that a violation of the license?
- anon1385 14y agoThey own the copyright to the code: they can do what they want with it. The licence is only a restriction on what people who don't own it can do. Also, the GPLv3 is not the same thing as the AGPL. Even if they didn't own the code, if it was only GPL then they could make changes without making those available since they were not distributing the software (assuming this was just a webapp). The AGPL closes that loophole.
- juan_juarez 14y agoJust because this code is released under GPLv3 it doesn't mean that the main codebase is GPLv3. They have complete ownership of their own code & can do as they will with it. The GPL only controls the rights of other people that want to use it.
- alberth 14y agoFor all those complaining that Everyblock should have given more notice, this obviously came as a surprise to the team. Just look at their blog history. Exactly 1 month ago (Jan 7th), they announced [1] a new Neighborhood Ad service for Business. People don't announce new paying services and then completely shut the doors 4 weeks later unless someone way up the NBC management chain axed this unexpectedly. [1] http://blog.everyblock.com/2013/jan/07/neighbor-ads/ http://blog.everyblock.com/2013/jan/07/neighbor-ads/ Update: Fixed typo
- knowtheory 14y agoI'm curious how many of the people reading this thread have ever actually used Everyblock (and if so how often)?
- charlieok 14y agoI would have, if they had my city. I remember checking back several times, and they never did.
- danso 14y agoI think the last time I checked it was six months ago, when Adrian left and I was curious to how the site actually looked. To my surprise, the site seemed to have thrived in appearance...the navigation had been cleaned up, more data sources had been added, and users were participating in discussions. I signed up as a user but didn't stay around...I think the site failed to become a "sticky" place. There was not enough of the psychological reward in returning to the site/refreshing the hoomepage...the site seemed content with just delivering a raw stream of datapoints rather than filtering out key stories and weighting their importance (which is another argument for how successful Facebook has been with their Top Stories feed, even though people think they just want items in chronological order). EveryBlock seemed very lackluster in its promotion. If I wasn't in the online news business and had been aware of the Knight News challenge, Adrian's early journalism work, or of Django, I don't think I would've ever heard of EveryBlock. Their Twitter account had fewer than 4,000 followers, which seems incomprehensibly low for an online community news site 5-years-old. Reddit has a thriving community of city-based subreddits...there's no reason why EveryBlock's rich information shouldn't have been a staple on them, but it was hardly ever linked to: http://www.reddit.com/domain/everyblock.com/ http://www.reddit.com/domain/everyblock.com/ I wish I could offer some link examples of the things I thought EveryBlock did well, but apparently its owners see no value in its long tail archival traffic and have effectively blanked out the site.
- sage 14y agoEB may have suffered from a lack of discoverability of its best features. The feature I found most useful was the ability to define an area on a map, then get email updates when other users posted news in that area. I think that should have been the primary focus of Everyblock instead of the raw stream of data.
- adrianh 14y agoI am super bummed about this. :-( I wrote some thoughts on my blog: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/rip-everyblock/ http://www.holovaty.com/writing/rip-everyblock/ Adrian (EveryBlock founder)
- knowtheory 14y agoSo where to from here Adrian? Do you know whether the current team is staying on at NBC or are they looking for new gigs? And it'd be interesting to hear what you and the other founders have been working on as well.
- luckysh0t 14y ago>Do you know whether the current team is staying on at NBC or are they looking for new gigs? From the post above: NBC News acquired msnbc.com last year and now has decided to shut down the site and let go all 10 employees.
- clicks 14y ago> And it'd be interesting to hear what you and the other founders have been working on as well. I'm not Adrian, but I'll answer for a small part: Adrian released a guitar album, and made http://www.soundslice.com/ http://www.soundslice.com/ (a guitar tab site, that plays tabs to Youtube videos)
- whyaduck 14y agoOk...soundslice is fantastic! What a great tool!
- adrianh 14y agoI've been working on Soundslice full time since I left EveryBlock at the end of August 2012: http://www.soundslice.com/ http://www.soundslice.com/ (blog post: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/goodbye-everyblock/ http://www.holovaty.com/writing/goodbye-everyblock/) It has nothing to do with local news or journalism -- it's a music thing. The main thing it has in common with EveryBlock is that it's fundamentally about creating structure from chaos, which is what I like to do.
- prawks 14y agoThis concept sounds awesome, I'm saddened that I only heard about it once it was closed.
- jacoblyles 14y agoWas this a Patch competitor?
- cedrichurst 14y agoPatch was a competitor to Everyblock. EB pretty much pioneered this space.
- charlieok 14y agoSo if I want hyperlocal news, is there anyone right now doing that?
- ericabiz 14y agoReddit has some great city/state subreddits (obviously depends on how tech-friendly your city is.) http://www.reddit.com/r/austin http://www.reddit.com/r/austin is a pretty thriving place, for example. Neighborhoods, in some cases, will have private groups. For instance, when I bought a house in my current neighborhood in Austin, the neighbors let me know about a private Yahoo group for this neighborhood. My neighborhood's population is just over 6,000 people. The Yahoo group has 1397 members and averages over 30 messages per day (!) Anything from "Can you recommend a plumber?" to "I have extra firewood" will show up there. The neighborhood association also prints a hard-copy newsletter that they deliver every month, which is sponsored by local businesses. (Note: We are not an HOA neighborhood--we just happen to have a pretty active population.)
- officemonkey 14y agoThere are thousands of independent blogs, subreddits, and local paper websites that do that everyday. In Chicago, we have a neighborhood blog called "Uptown Update" which covers a lot of interesting news. I can't imagine a big site being able to capture that market, unless they created a platform for bloggers/reporters to monetize their own work.
- SriramR 14y agowww.patch.com
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mippie_moe 14y agohttp://www.nextdoor.com http://www.nextdoor.com will make a good replacement.
- kfury 14y agoOur neighborhood uses Nextdoor (about 950 homes) and it's fantastic for community building. It focused more on personal interaction than hyperlocal news aggregation, but in my opinion that made it more useful. Neighbors in our community who have lived on the same block for 20 years without speaking are now getting together for block parties and sharing info about babysitters and local crimes. It's actually very useful.
- pcl 14y agoDoes anyone have any idea what the ASCII art in the HTML of their homepage (http://everyblock.com http://everyblock.com) is meant to represent?
- alaskamiller 14y agoIt's a sad blob fish. (http://www.upalong.org/archive_full.asp?id=232 http://www.upalong.org/archive_full.asp?id=232)
- sjs382 14y agoI doubt this repo is current, but the code for everyblock is open source: https://code.google.com/p/ebcode/ https://code.google.com/p/ebcode/ Also, a fork: https://github.com/openplans/openblock https://github.com/openplans/openblock
- cedrichurst 14y agoThe fact that this code is not current is extremely surprising, actually. It's GPLV3-licensed, so my somewhat uninformed expectation is that MSNBC would be obligated to open-source any derivative works? Unless they did a complete rewrite of the codebase at some point. I created a petition asking MSNBC to open-source the latest codebase and also release the user-generated content to the public domain: https://www.change.org/petitions/msnbc-open-source-the-everyblock-codebase-content https://www.change.org/petitions/msnbc-open-source-the-every...
- genwin 14y agoFrom GPLV3: "One of the fundamental requirements of the GPL is that when you distribute object code to users, you must also provide them with a way to get the source." Presumably MSNBC didn't distribute object code to users, in which case they have no obligation to open-source any derivative work.
- jlev 14y agoAnd that's why you should use the Affero GPL for web services. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html MSNBC really screwed the pooch on this one, from their initial "open source" via zipfile, to the zero-day shutdown. Not what the Knight Foundation intended to fund with their open source requirements.
- cedrichurst 14y agoPer another thread of discussion, apparently the rules of the GPL do not apply to the licensor, only the licensee. If MSNBC accepted OSS community contributions to the Everyblock codebase, they might be in violation. But if it was a one-way offering, they can apparently still retain full rights. I imagine the initial Mozilla-Knight foundation grant makes this a bit more complex, but IANAL.
- php_on_rails 14y agoSo glad this incubator for intolerance and racism has been shut down. I am sure the community will find another place to talk about EveryBlack they see in their neighborhood
- ChuckMcM 14y agoThe whole free/not-free/kinda-free issue is raised in a couple of ways in this thread. NBC mentioned the challenge of creating a business model (caveat recent advertising efforts) The question I have been following (and Dan Gillmor as well) is this, "Is there a 'self supporting' model for local journalism?" For that to work the revenues generated have to cover the cost of running the site. And my experience is that this has to mean both keeping the cost of running the site as low as possible as well as finding revenue. We can see by example that without such a model these sites disappear. Three possible models come to mind, although I'm sure there must be more; 1) Visitors to the site pay for access. Historically this is challenging, but with the experience of 'free' sites vanishing due to money problems perhaps there is a core set of consumers who could create a viable market for this. 2) Advertisers on the site share the costs of operating it amongst themselves. This is the current model for free 'weeklys' where advertising funds are the largest revenue model. The 'value' of net advertising however is much lower than paper advertising thanks in part to Google and others. So this is made harder by that and people more easily avoiding the advertisements. 3) A civic fund, basically spending some of the community's tax dollars on funding a local news portal/site. Given the way that everyblock got created perhaps a migration where its tax funded at first, then advertising funded later? Sort of a private/public partnership. Clearly every city has communication issues with their citizens so they could use this sort of channel to reach out to folks who don't keep flyers around (Sunnyvale for example has a flyer which says which days of the year are free for bringing in hazardous waste to the dump) I certainly agree with the general sentiment that this is a useful service.
- quomopete 14y agoThis is amazingly(!) ham-fisted on the part of NBC. everyblock.com was pretty vibrant from what I could tell. And being forced to shutter overnight is about as unprofessional as it gets (again, I understand this as, without a doubt, some NBC exec throwing a temper tantrum and not realizing the value of their own assets when hitting the nuke button). I saw a lot of connecting going on there, in a way that is much more valuable than other social websites in that people could use it as a way to promote and share local/in the flesh resources and information and it brought a lot of value to the people who used it. That there was no warning, no way for people to reach out to others they'd like to stay in touch with after the shutdown is reckless decision making. Just a full-on, ridiculous implosion. Social capital is a real thing, and it's too bad that NBC does not consider that in their ledger.
- kill9 14y agoI would have paid for an everyblock subscription. Sad to see NBC News shut it down.