Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Outside.in

AOL Acquires Hyper-Local Blog Company Outside.in

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:41:58 +0000

AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL) has acquired “hyper-local” blog company Outside.in according to an industry source. Rumor has it that the acquisition price was under $10 million. Outside.in will be integrated into AOL’s Patch.com. Outside.in was founded in 2006 by Steven Johnson. [BusinessInsider]

AOL Rumored To Be In Talks For An Acquisition Of Outside.in

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 19:00:55 +0000

Rumor has is that AOL is in talks to acquire local news aggregation company Outside.in. The talks may fall apart since it is in early stages according to BusinessInsider. Steven Johnson founded Outside.in in 2006. Investors in Outside.in include Union Square Ventures, Marc Andreessen, John Borthwick, Esther Dyson, and CNN. If AOL does end up acquiring Outside.in, it is likely that they will roll the technology into Patch.com.

Outside.in Raises $7 Million From Union Square, CNN, Betaworks, Village Ventures, NYC Fund, and Milestone

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:19:00 +0000

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:

BROOKLYN, NY (December 8, 2009) – Outside.in (http://www.outside.in), the leading hyperlocal content and advertising platform, today announced the close of a $7 million B round of financing, led by Union Square Ventures and including CNN Worldwide, one of the world’s most respected and trusted sources for news and information as a strategic investor. The round includes all previous venture investors, including Village Ventures, Betaworks, the New York City Investment Fund and Milestone Venture Partners, as well as continued support from a strong group of angel investors.

“In our opinion, there has never been a better time to build a new business in local media. This round represents a huge vote of confidence from our investors and CNN Worldwide that they agree and believe our results and approach are positioned to win,” said Mark Josephson, CEO of Outside.in. “The continued support of our investors shows our proven track record and their confidence that we will continue to focus on delivering huge value for all participants in the local media ecosystem—consumers, publishers, bloggers and advertisers.

Said Fred Wilson, principal at Union Square Ventures, “Local media is undergoing a radical reinvention and Outside.in is at the center of it, providing readers, advertisers, publishers, and bloggers the tools they need to make local news and information more relevant and profitable. Outside.in’s reach has grown 500 percent in the past year, showcasing the power of this new model.”

As part of its investment, CNN Worldwide entered into a concurrent multi-year deal to use the Outside.in for Publishers aggregation and curation platform to power hyperlocal news across all of CNN.com and its related properties. The first implementations are expected to be completed in Q1 of 2010.

“We are proud to have partnered with Union Square Ventures, Betaworks, and others to support Outside.in during the next stage of its business evolution, as the company continues to build an industry leading platform serving the hyperlocal market,” said Estenson. “Our strategic investment in this company and the hyperlocal platform they have built demonstrates our commitment to delivering a strong local news offering to our users.”

The funding round comes after a year of significant milestones for Outside.in.

More than one hundred media partners around the country now use the Outside.in For Publishers platform, including the New York Post, Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS) Local, Media General (NYSE: MEG) and Chicago Tribune

Traffic to the Outside.in Network has grown to nearly 6 million monthly unique visitors

More than four thousand local bloggers use Outside.in’s distribution, geo-tagging and mapping tools

The funding will be used to support the continued development of the Outside.in platform for local content and advertising.

NBC Local Media Launches Neighborhood News Using Outside.in

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:24:13 +0000

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.”

The news pages created for the NNP is based on Outside.in technology.

[via MediaPost]

Outside.in Brings In $1.5 Million Funding

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:30:18 +0000

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