Outside.in is a hyperlocal news aggregation company that has been attracting quite a bit of investment from multiple sources. In the company’s Series B round of funding, Union Square Ventures was the lead investor. Others that participated include TV news network CNN, Betaworks, Village Ventures, New York City Investment Fund, and Milestone Venture Partners.
This means Outside.in has raised over $12 million in total funding since the company launched in 2007. After the jump is the full press release from the company: (more…)
NBC Local Media has decided to go extra local by launching a Neighborhood News Pages (NNP) on nine of their owned-and-operated markets. Of the nine markets that NBC is launching this platform on, seven of them are in the top 10 most populated cities in the nation. The local markets include WNBC New York, KNBC Los Angeles, WMAQ Chicago, WCAU Philadelphia, KNTV San Francisco, KXAS Dallas-Ft. Worth, WRC Washington D.C., KNDS San Diego, and KTIS Hartford.
Neighborhood news will aggregate news from local NBC TV affiliates and organize the news and information by neighborhood. This includes sports, health, local news, weather, traffic, and local events. This is bad news for local newspaper company websites. NBC clearly has the advantage by having a bigger budget to take on traditional news media companies. There will be a lot of advertising poaching in the local markets as well.
“Our new Locals Only sites enable our users to be true insiders and to fulfill on that promise we need to deepen our coverage in local communities,” stated Brian Buchwald, SVP of local integrated media at NBC. Buchwald added that the NNP would “create more targeted ad impressions at a fraction of the cost.”
Brooklyn, N.Y. based web company, Outside.in announced today that they have raised $1.5 million in funding. With this round of funding, the company plans on developing a geo-targeted advertising platform.
Steven Berlin Johnson started the company last year and raised $900,000 last Spring. Some of the investors for the $1.5 million round includes Union Square Ventures, Milestone Ventures, George Crowley, John Seely Brown, Esther Dyson, and John Borthwick. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape participated in the seed funding, but not in this round of funding.
Outside.in auto-detects your location when you enter their URL into your browser. When I typed in the URL from my apartment in Minneapolis, I was relocated to: http://outside.in/Minneapolis. This connected me to news about the 35W Bridge and an article that relates to a police chasing a criminal from St. Paul to Minneapolis.
The site also shows nearby bloggers/local experts that provides information related to the city that one belongs to. This is a neat concept because it is the locals that select what content is relevant. Outside.in even has an iPhone-compatible version of the site.
Outside.in is expected to also make a major announcement this week so stay tuned.
Information Source: [1] Silicon Alley Insider: outside.in Raises $1.5 Million, Preps Site Revamp
