January 23, 2008

EveryBlock Launches as Local News Aggregator for SF, NYC, and Chicago

Henry Work

33 comments »

EveryBlock launches today as a geographically-filtered news and data aggregation service for San Francisco, New York City, and Chicago. The site attempts to answer one deceptively simple question: “What’s happening in my neighborhood?” For EveryBlock, it boils down to three types of information: geographically-relevant news and blog entries, civic information, and “fun from across the web.”

“Hyperlocal” is the buzz-word for this service. Among the data aggregated are geo-tagged images from Flickr, lost/found items from Craigslist, and cafe reviews from Yelp. While EveryBlock aggregates plenty of data from web services such as these, it’s particularly focused on surfacing data managed by the government: liquor licenses, restaurant inspections, and crime reports for example.

To get a taste of EveryBlock’s power, you can check out a map of all photos taken recently in Downtown San Francisco, a list of the vehicles stolen in Chicago, or even a log of the graffiti recently cleaned up in Brooklyn. While EveryBlock does not yet provide an API, RSS feeds for specific neighborhoods are available.

The team of four behind EveryBlock is led by Adrian Holovaty, co-creator of the popular Python framework Django. Holovaty is also behind chicagocrime.org, a “freely browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago.” EveryBlock is funded by a $1.1M, two-year grant from the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge, a competition for making local news more easily obtainable.

EveryBlock competes directly with Outside.in. Yahoo’s OurCity, while still beta and only covering cities in India, has many similar features as well. Also see YourStreet.

Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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EveryBlock Launches « eNeighbors.com Blog

January 23rd, 2008 at 8:25 pm

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January 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 pm

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February 1st, 2008 at 7:57 pm

Comments

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WebSideVentures

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:23 pm

Wow, this brings a new level of meaning to the term “hyper-local.” The business reviews are the only thing that would make me want to come back. Actually, since they offer an RSS feed, why would I want to come back? Any ideas on how they are going to monetize this?
Everett

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:25 pm

Agree with Websideventures.
David

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:27 pm

How long before they go “hyper-bankrupt”?
Does advertising alone really work as a business model? I mean, a *sustainable* business model?
Or are they just in the game looking for a big media buyout offer?
Everett

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:36 pm

Just finished checking out the site and it looks very impressive with all the stats and graphics. Pretty neat but how is Craigslist providing information to them?
yongfook

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:41 pm

re: pictures on a map…doesn’t Flickr already do this? meh.

(RSS + Some big service’s API + Google Maps == Web 2.0 App!) is so 2007…
Adrian Holovaty

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:42 pm

David wrote: “Or are they just in the game looking for a big media buyout offer?”

As mentioned in the original post, we’re funded by a grant, with no obligation to make a profit. We’re much more interested in making a difference and experimenting with new forms of journalism than building something with the goal of a “big media buyout offer.” I realize this is different from the usual TechCrunch scene, but it is what it is.

Thanks to TechCrunch for covering us! Hope the Chicago/NYC/SF-based readers out there will find our site useful and let us know how we can improve.

Adrian @ EveryBlock
David

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:43 pm

Looks like they’re using their own home-spun maps. Nice!
JeffC

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:46 pm

I think the outfit that does ‘hyper local’ right has a lot of potential. Tons of surveys and predictions say local advertising will grow by the billions over the newt couple of years. And if this is the group that can be on the front edge of hyper local info … then it’s got a nice shot. The real estate angle alone … a lot of people would like to have snapshots of crime, traffic, businesses, density … etc. And if one site gives you a snapshot of just about any type of information and news associated with a region … then boom. Advertising dollars will roll in. Local and national dollars.
JeffC

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:51 pm

Adrian, forgot to say best wishes with this venture. I think it’s a great idea and product, and obviously the Knight Foundation thought so as well.
Technicle

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:52 pm

Interesting.. bold try!
yongfook

January 23rd, 2008 at 7:52 pm

ETA: just checked it out - I like the design! Clean.

Still a bit meh on the idea though. Perhaps I’d feel different if it was more relevant to me (Tokyo version) but I guess they need to stem growth initially.
Wes

January 23rd, 2008 at 8:18 pm

Looks like a pretty decent site and hopefully useful for people who reside in three cities covered so far.
Zaid

January 23rd, 2008 at 8:19 pm

Tip: if you are in the news aggregation business, you should be showing NEWS. Not asking me to make a half dozen decisions. I told you your city–show me the news now!
TP

January 23rd, 2008 at 8:38 pm

Sorry for the STUPID question but… how are you going to get users to the site?

More Web 2.0 B.S.= not a business.
tequila Al

January 23rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm

After seeing last weeks porn site ratings, i’m thinking a super hot chick telling me what’s up on the block might be needed!!!!
David

January 23rd, 2008 at 9:19 pm

Hey Adrian…
Always encouraging to hear from a founder on these blog forums. Sorry for my cynical tone (#3) — I should have paid more attention to the posting to see how you were being funded. I realize now this is more of a labor of love than anything else. The layout is phenomenal — definitely makes me want to learn django. Cheers! -D
Don Jones

January 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 pm

hyper local…hasn’t it been done before? What’s different now? Focused on Government data? Boy, that’s exciting…
Please explain

January 23rd, 2008 at 10:03 pm

I live in New York City and just tried this with my neighborhood. Here’s what they have for my area of Manhattan (Murray Hill)

5 random photos of people in the hospital and/or real estate pics of buildings.
1 building permit
3 crome reports
16 random photos listed under “news”

All of this content is being pulled from other sites like Yelp for flickr.

Although the interface is clean and nice, it doesnt really give me any useful data. The reviews are displayed in a way that take triple the amount of clicks to go from one to the next as opposed to going to yelp itself.

Just seems like a pointless collection of datapoints being pulled from other services and slapped together in a nice skin.

Try my neighborhood: zip code: 10016
Adrian Holovaty

January 23rd, 2008 at 10:51 pm

To the anonymous commenter #18 — it’s all about the serendipity. Looks like EveryBlock hasn’t found much information that interests you in the past couple of days, but if you stick with it, I’m willing to bet you’re bound to have a serendipitous moment sooner rather than later.

Also, I’d encourage you to take another look at our sources to reconsider your statement that “[a]ll of this content is being pulled from other sites like Yelp for flickr.” NYC crime stats previously were only available in PDF format on an obscure NYPD page, and we’ve done the work of extracting the data from them. Demolition permits (did you notice a building near you, at 13 E. 31st, just got a demolition permit yesterday?) are only available on a NYC government site that requires you to enter a permit number to search. Same goes for restaurant inspections, graffiti and building violations in New York.

Point is, although we’re nowhere near the number of data sources we’d like in the long term, we’re still really proud of how many sets of public records we’ve liberated already.

Of course, the more data sources we add, the tougher it is to help people wade through the sea of data. It’s one of the many interesting problems we look forward to solving!

Thanks for your feedback –
Adrian @ EveryBlock
i am under age

January 24th, 2008 at 12:06 am

Adrian,

you mean i should check back every day and wait for something that interests me to show?
Simon Willison

January 24th, 2008 at 3:18 am

#20: if you don’t want to check back every day you can subscribe to the RSS feed for your block.
Fred Oliveira

January 24th, 2008 at 3:48 am

Adrian: this is great work, to be honest. More often than not people frown upon services that aren’t immediately obvious simply because they don’t understand their potential. Sure, people will argue that the data has been on the web for a long time, but the sheer fact that it is aggregated for me in a way that makes sense (in this case, location) makes it a pretty cool app.
RealEstateEconomics

January 24th, 2008 at 4:55 am

The sings of that 2008 will all be about niches are all the way, almost every city will have its own web destinations.
Sailor Moon

January 24th, 2008 at 8:24 am

It’s nice to see at least one startup sees beyond the bay area.

It drives me up the wall that “iGoogle” shows me a map that’s centered around alcatraz when it starts up. 99% of us don’t live in the bay area and don’t give a damn about it.
ohnopirates

January 24th, 2008 at 9:07 am

Heh, I immediately clicked open the link and tried it out without reading the full article.
I came back thinking: Wow, this just looks like they took chicagocrime.org and tried to ad other information… fairly unsuccessfully.

And behold, I am correct.
This might just be because a search on Hyde Park came up with about 30 crime listings and 2 news stories.
Oh U of C, how I miss thee.
Jesse

January 24th, 2008 at 9:14 am

I’m surprised by the anti-social comments here, I really liked the site and thought it was a genuinely interesting approach. A lot of the government data is especially cool, as the local gov sites do a pretty poor job of disseminating that information. Nice to have it aggregated with other news, too, I can see your point about creating serendipity.

Keep up the great work.
Lateefx

January 24th, 2008 at 10:24 am

_You techies are way to pessimistic about EVERYTHING…LIGHTEN UP and get your heads out of WoW.

Perhaps you shouldn’t be commenting on Design & Marketing elements if you got your nose buried in code all day. Stick to what you know and be respectful of others’ work.

Great job on the site EveryBlock team.
Robb Montgomery

January 24th, 2008 at 11:31 am

Adrian,

City center data is nice - but more people live in the suburbs of Chicago than in Cook County, right?

So what will take to upgrade the Chicago service to benefit the larger bowl?

Would be a much better model going forward to consider that regions like Chicago are actually defined as a six county region by data collectors and news gatherers.

Plus if you looked at the pie this way - you would also get the No. 2 and No. 3 cities in Illinois in your data set and be far more valuable to all users.

Thanks, my neighbor!

Robb Montgomery
Brad Flora

January 24th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

Congrats on the launch, Adrian!

Here in the newsroom today, there’s a lot of excitement about EveryBlock.com. A few professors have wondered if we could perhaps get a demo sometime?

I spent the better part of last night poking around on the site, looking for story ideas to pass along to our business desk. Today, still thinking about what you guys have done, I wrote up a review over on my online journalism blog (click my name above).

The Gist:

There’s lots to like on the site, but what’s got me most excited is the way EveryBlock lowers the barrier to entry for certain genres of citizen journalism.

Chicago’s got some great CTA bloggers because it’s relatively easy to get CTA info. I predict we’ll soon see a bunch of EveryBlock-driven consumer info blogs launching around Chicago, NYC and SF. People will start writing about restaurants that failed inspection/didn’t score a liquor license etc.

But EveryBlock’s not the “key to all mythologies” for hyperlocal news (sorry, I know you hate the term). We’re still missing decent monetization tools for publishers who go local and better quality filters in the site that aggregate local content.

Anyway, enjoy my review, and congrats. It’s fun to see a non-commercial site on Techcrunch that’s head and shoulders above most of the utter pap featured on here.

Brad Flora
Medill School of Journalism
The Chicago Methods Reporter
Wills

January 25th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

Man, I love it. Please bring it to the UK