Msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine

Wow, whew and my goodness, it feels a bit like Jonah and the whale but if you are happy I'll be hopeful.

No -- I'm just in charge of collapsing comments, now. Can you believe they pay me 100K a year to do that?

Awesome.

Wake up, Brian! You're sleep-Newsvining again!

Hey guys, the new banner link is pretty cool, nice choice of breaking stories to debut it with!

Holy carp! I'm not sure if I am flummoxed or flabbergasted? Maybe both. Perhaps neither?
Well good luck to you NV employees. This looks to be a good fit.

Brian,

No -- I'm just in charge of collapsing comments, now. Can you believe they pay me 100K a year to do that?

Re; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley coming true ? In my day, We only had to worry about bar room and concert bouncers. Now in the electronic age, I guess I have to worry about being "collapsed"

Actually with my long legs on plane flights, that might come in handy.

Also, will there be any changes (besides of course the changing from Google to Live Search and FMPub to MSN Ads)?

MSNBC already does stories on Linux. Do you have a reason to believe that MS exerts undue editorial influence over the site?

The biggest change that I see will need to be made now, more than ever, is that if we're going to potentially be feeding to a major news site, Newsvine needs a way to "firewall" off the meta content. If it's already a controversy to have it on our own front page, imagine having it on MSNBC's.

Also, MSNBC has a rather liberal bias. While Newsvine does also, hopefully non-liberal views aren't quashed or censored.

According to the seed from Pauline, Newsvine stays independent, although a subsidiary of MSNBC. Mike D is still CEO. I don't think anyone is planning to go anywhere right away.

I'm not that worried.

Congrats, guys.

Also, MSNBC has a rather liberal bias. While Newsvine does also, hopefully non-liberal views aren't quashed or censored.

LOL, was going to say that too but didn't want to start a political debate on this kind of story.

Also, let me state that I'm glad this is happening (despite what it sounds like). I'm just a tad worried, because I've seen what big companies can do to promising little ones.

Andrew, according to the seed from MSNBC, they're sensitive to the "crushing the little guy" problem. It remains to be seen how successful the integration is, of course, but at least they acknowledge the potention issue:

Newsvine will now report to a joint venture of Microsoft Corp. and NBC Universal, but while Davidson said it may "expand a little bit" with msnbc.com's support, growing from six employees to perhaps 10 or 15, he and Tillinghast both stressed that Newsvine would continue to run as an independent site.

"We want to understand, but we don't have any agenda," Tillinghast said. "Where companies get into trouble is when they try to impose big-company standards in small companies."

Also, MSNBC has a rather liberal bias. While Newsvine does also, hopefully non-liberal views aren't quashed or censored.

Seriously, are we having this discussion again?

Was anybody paying attention to Cutty's article, or Partisan Hack's article, or Mykola's article, or Epiphany Sorbet's article?

Was anybody paying attention to Cutty's article, or Partisan Hack's article, or Mykola's article, or Epiphany Sorbet's article?

Obviously not.

And this is today's issue of easy answers for easy questions.

Congrats to the newsvine team. I look forward to receiving my check in the mail...especially if it's a liberal check.

As for employees, yes, of course, we're all staying on! :) It's business as usual at Newsvine... the sky is rising.

Mike, you can repeat this until you are blue in the face but there are those who will no longer believe anything you say because of your partnership with a --gasp-- corporation.

Personally, I look forward to the benefits that are on the horizon.

My homepage is MSN.com which of course links to MSNBC.com. Will Newsvine be featured somewhere on those homepages?

Well, this should make getting interviews with authors much more easy? In the past I'd tell them I write for newsvine and blogcritics and if they've heard of either it's the latter. Now that'll change. Heck, when I go to interview someone from Slate I can tell them we are owned by the same company.

Speaking of which there's been suggestions for a while - from authors and publicists - that I should get my author interviews to a wider audience. Maybe this will do that.

So I'm hopeful and biased and selfish in that regard.

The downside- we're owned by a corporate giant. But that doesn't always have to be a bad thing. For one thing we can expect bugs to be fixed faster, new tools to be added and more cool toys, right?

Pleez don't tell me I have to run Vista to keep writing on Newsvine !

Pleez don't tell me I have to run Vista to keep writing on Newsvine !

Probably not, but you might require a security update every now and then. But, if you are running Vista, these updates can be set to be automatic. That way you don't have to worry about it and have the peace of mind knowing that you are safely and securely using Newsvine.

I think I will stick to my old XP Professional. Most of my software will not work on Vista actually.....

many of the people are here to get their voice in to compete against "the man". Now, they're going to be working for "the man" as they do this.

If they were writing for anything other than their own site, they were already writing for "the man." It was just a much smaller man (no offense Mike!). The site was already associated with the AP and ESPN. Column authors are already paid (albeit meagerly) for their work, so in some sense anyone who didn't think they had already "sold out" just a little bit was just fooling themselves.

If you want to be independent, be independent and launch your own blog on your own personally owned domain, but don't make the mistake that anyone on Newsvine was ever independent. Ever. It's the community that's always made this site what it was.

I am independent. I do have my own site, hosted on my server with money out of my own pocket that I earned myself. That's about as independent as you can get right?

I agree with you on one thing though, the community is what made this site what it is.

Now it's going to be the money that makes this site what it is. You'll see.

Me, too. And I'm independent when I operate on that site. But when I'm at Newsvine, I've always been subject to their rules and their standards. I recognize that. Anyone who didn't recognize that and thought Newsvine was the Wild West was mistaken, that's all I'm saying.

And, amen to that, Mike. Anarchy benefits no one; the way you guys have managed to keep this site both organically lively and organizationally functional is pretty much brilliant, in my opinion.

and influence the news

This may sound like nitpicking, but how do we influence the news??! We discuss the news, we argue about the news, we hate each other because of the news, but we don't influence the news. The news is the news, it's what we talk about, we are the consumers of the news, not it's source. News happens, we discuss it.

I'm sure he meant that we influence the news that is consumed.

Phaedrus, ye have t' pay attintion now. Th' news comes alang here on Newsvine about two or three days before ye see it on th' telly. Unliss of course it has powerful flacks like th' U.S. Governmint floggin' it t' th' ink-sthained wretches mainsthream media, yer more loikely t' see it here farst. [Ag'in allowin' f'r ixceptions: Britney Spears prancin' around ludhicrously in a black bikini will get televised much quicker than, say, stharvin' childhern in Dharfur. Mebbe if we sint 'em some black bikinis?]

#8.5
Anarchy benefits no one

boo! anarchy benefits everyone!
my only concern about this is what happens when msnbc.com decides to sell its new subsidiary to, i don't know, say...News Corp? what's stopping this news blog community from getting gobbled up in Murdoch's empire just like MySpace.com? The idea that Newsvine can be bought and sold made my day a little sadder...

but kudos to good people getting more money!

You know it would be interesting to see and track those stats (well I guess y'all are tracking but would be nice for us to see them).

the vast majority of our users come to Newsvine to read your articles, your seeds, your comments and the wire articles you think are important. Don't loose sight of the fact that you decide what the relevant news is every day.

It is obvious but it often amazes me how quickly we (me included) forget that simple truth when in the midst of a discussion. Especially a heated one. Thanks for saying it Lance. This is one of the most important elements of Newsvine that I feel we all need to keep at the front of our thoughts when engaging on Newsvine.

For me, the point has been especially obvious ever since we have been able to use Google Analytics to track traffic to our column. As you say, this deal will mean many more visitors who will be of the lurker kind. They form the largest group of revenue earners for us all, IMO.

Hold out until things start going pear-shaped... I enjoy reading your comments.

Stay... please? :)

well-

he's gone...

who's next?

I can't believe that comment got so many votes.

tschreck dont be like that, this could get interesting, I see it as a two edged sword, and M$ defiantly has the blunt edge here. remember the names Oxygen and Paladium and se if that finds its way into the system.

I really do hope people will stick around to see how this all plays out. This doesn't have to be the deal-breakers so many are treating it as.

I am going to have to consider tschreck's point. This community is pretty nice. M$ on the other hand has been found to be a company that crushes competition, has used monopoly powers(in the usa and europe), and has done a great deal to remove interoperability form the computing world. Remember the M$ motto," Embrace, Expand, Extinguish". Seriously, today on the news, John Edwards got grilled for working for a hedge fund company that sent money to the kaymans to avoid taxes. the implication was guilt by association.

I thought Microsoft pulled out of MSNBC a while ago.

If you can believe that, you can believe anything...

but it's also okay to believe that

I never said that the text in the "Why" paragraph above was not correct. Just that it is not the whole story.

(Note: I have seen similar "5 W" explanations for other sales of startups in the past, and none of them every mention rewarding investors and financial gain for founders as a motivating factor, even though they would be lying to deny this).

Why so down on Newsvine, Matt? No one every guaranteed you that Newsvine was going to go it alone indefinitely. I've never gotten the impression that Newsvine wanted to be some kind of new media cowboy, sticking it out on the lonely range. If you didn't think that Newsvine would partner up, you were probably being a little naive.

Every other story I've read about this has so far stressed Newsvine's independence. They're not even going to make them change the Google site search feature, for pete's sake. Take a deep breath and let the information come out.

Spif-

have you ever been through a merger?

it ALWAYS starts off with oh everything will be fine and we won't change a thing..

and then come the real changes, and the rifs and the "culture adjustments"..

why would msnbc spend a pile of gold on newsvine if they didn't intend to make as much money as possible on it?

mark my words.. in a year, newsvine will not be recognizable.

Been through several tschreck, and I fully agree... but I'm going to bat it out until I can't stand it no more...

Spiffie, at the end of the day, I really don't care. I just think it's funny who they teamed up with, all things considered. Especially when a lot of people here blabber on about "citizen journalism". I'm just having fun with the cannon fodder.

Why are you so up on a Microsoft subsidiary? They have all the money in the world now, they don't need your support.

tschreck, we don't know if it was a pile of gold or a few loaves of banana nut bread (although I'm pretty sure it wasn't a few loaves of banana nut bread). I'm certain Mike D and Calvin got the guys a comfortable chunk of change, but let's not fool ourselves that Newsvine was valuable in the way that a Facebook or a Digg purchase would be.

Regarding the cultural adjustments, I'm in a "wait and see" holding pattern. First, such changes are rarely immediate. Second, such changes are not always negative. Third, MSNBC isn't even making them get ride of the Google site search per the article Newsvine Tom seeded, so I'm cautiously optimistic that site independence is being (mostly) maintained.

I'm saying, "We'll see what happens." Because that's all I can conclude right now based on the information available. It would be just as foolish to say that everything is going to be sunshine and roses as it is to say the site is going down in flames and corporate censors are soon to descend upon us.

Matt, I'm not "up" exactly. I'm an Apple fanboy, so if anyone should be again' it, certainly I should, eh? But I've been around a little while and I think that Calvin and Mike have generally tried to do the right thing as far as maintaining column owner independence. I'm relatively sure that they any deal would have protected the user base's right to expression.

Might things change a year from now? Yeah. But things might have changed a year from now anyway. The only thing I can do is take this change as it happens. If I'm not satisfied with the changes, I'll leave, simple as that. But it doesn't strike me as particularly rational to assume the worst from the outset.

mark my words.. in a year, newsvine will not be recognizable.

Sort of like Flickr isn't recognizable?

Oh, wait....

No offence Mike, but I have to agree with enigma -- I've read your blog too and boy oh boy... :(

Ugh... forgive me. Just read the rest of the posts that I've missed so far and enigma is a jerk. That was not my intention.

Just stating you seem slightly more sucky-sucky towards a corporate now, Mike... and I really don't mean that in an insulting way.

Haha :)

Whatchootalkinboutwillis?

Didn't Myk just cover the use of betchabippie terms? You kids, never remember the rules and that's part of the alchemy that differentiates a labor of love and a team of entrepreneurial trailblazers from stuffed suits. So too the vision and goals are at polar extremes and this is what you would see and must to create this...

There are so many differences that it would never make sense to foolishly blur the two.

But the sad reality that will nag at me is that corporate decision making routinely does just that. Some dipstick in metrics comes up with a way to save revenue based on an empirical model that in no way incorporates the off balance sheet reality of where the value lies.

If there's anyone better than old ITT at quantifying productivity down to the quality of you bathroom breaks it's GE and nothing about the spit shined shoe crowd who calls the shots over there inspires much confidence with regard to respecting autonomy without a struggle. What about the ads, will those be unchanged?

Not to be Debbie Downer in the time of celebrating the tools you've wanted to move up with the plan, but so much of what we are here is who we are together and it's like waiting to see how the new stepmother will be.

We're going to continue to operate the site independently, for the most part, and do what's best in order to keep growing and improving.

Really glad to hear that, well done NV team!

waiting to see how the new stepmother will be

I think that's it in a nutshell... and only time and whatever happens is going to ease user fears, I think.

MikeD just like any Murdoch paper NV will remain independent so long as it's value exceeds its liabilities and we are not just talking about $ here.

Newsvine users are, by and large, smarter than your average bear - and, even so, we still have plenty of dreck. I worry that, with a wider audience, the core group of users who want quality will get drowned out, and the dreck will come to dominate (even more). I hope that doesn't happen. I merely worry that it will (and may even be likely/inevitable).

Where can I get one of these jobs that allow me to make fun of my boss in public :-)

I think the answer to your question (if that's what it was) lies in the alias you have picked for yourself:-)

Chasing, I think one of the primary benefits to come out of the deal will be, as has been said elsewhere, that now the staff can concentrate on how to get better quality material promoted since they will have to deal with site maintenance issues much less.

have you ever been through a merger?

it ALWAYS starts off with oh everything will be fine and we won't change a thing..

and then come the real changes, and the rifs and the "culture adjustments"..

why would msnbc spend a pile of gold on newsvine if they didn't intend to make as much money as possible on it?

mark my words.. in a year, newsvine will not be recognizable.

It depends. I've seen mergers where the larger organization absorbed the smaller, and I've seen them where the larger organization realized they were doing it wrong and change to mirror the smaller. Maybe MSNBC.com will be unrecognizable instead.

I have seen them where the smaller took over the larger (Apple and NeXT).

of which AOL and Time Warner was the best example.

of which AOL and Time Warner was the best example.

Only in appearance. In the end it was the larger absorbing the smaller.

You guys are confusing mergers with acquisitions. Aol and Time Warner was a merger, MSNBC bought Newsvine outright.

good point.

Apple Acquired NeXT.

Apple was on the shop for their next OS and looked at buying Be, but opted for Next because Jobs sold it better.

And, to be honest, NextStep's development tools blew Be's away.

You guys are confusing mergers with acquisitions. Aol and Time Warner was a merger, MSNBC bought Newsvine outright.

You're right. I meant to say acquisition.

Apple Acquired NeXT.

Apple was on the shop for their next OS and looked at buying Be, but opted for Next because Jobs sold it better.

I suspect it was more they wanted Jobs back.

Sure that wasn't MS-dough, oldfogey? He, he from a confirmed Mac user!

Oh, and last night I had an overwhelming feeling about Newsvine being brought out -- my god I'm such a psychic. ;)

Any predictions on the 2008 election?

Al Gore will come in with a late and highly unconstitutional run but won't care.

Hillary will become a house-maid and Bill a sex worker in Texas.

Obama will be assassinated before the elections but would have had a slapping fest in Times Square with Gore had he not been.

...I really don't care either way. ;)

Ah, that's great :)

Thanks Mike!

Hopefully the porn advertisements will keep them busy while you and Cash bombard us with all types of fun stuff.

*hides* ^.^

Red meat, of course. The color scheme may be green, but that doesn't mean the stories have to be. ;-)

I sent Calvin a friend request after the last vinemeet and he remarked something along the lines of me having set my bar higher than most. I replied that I didn't really want to establish relationships with staff until i was confident this whole enterprise wasn't simply going to be sold off in the medium term. I obviously misjudged 'medium term' by a month or so.

Still it would be churlish not to offer congrats [sigh, so much churl, so little time.]
So congrats to the past owners is due.

Given the consistant rise in readership will I will be looking at corresponding increases in earnings just from those small percentages who bother checking out the RAV's given it's branding significance.
I could presume some discernable effect given the numbers. 12 RAV's up against a million new members a month.

All marketing speak aside, I'll judge my worth by figures rather than platitudes or 'potential'

A question that to me cuts to the heart of the matter is that if the 'sky was being raised' by a compound increase on a monthly basis then what has this selloff done other than create substantial wealth to it's founders.

Time will tell, I'll give it a couple of months before it's tabloid bi-polarism either increases or not or the earnings compete with other more profitable writing models.

King of the backhanded compliment,me.

So newvine interested in having some spectacularly budgeted vinemeet on it's own tab yet?

you got it straight, cowboy.
I've seen this site grow from a little pea sprout to a wrathing jack's beanstalk...
Anyways, I was just thinking I liked newsvine a lot more for the first few months i used it,.. pre-vote, pre-censorship, pre-advertisement, etc... hell, i think there was only 3 colors on the site at first. well that was an exaggeration... The point is, I liked it better when it wasn't so big... it was more of a community, you could argue online with fewer people and get to know them. Now however it took me over half hour to get half way down this damn comment thread. So is it really so great that "the sky is being raised", more exposure, bigger platform, etc.? I think there's too much, can we make it smaller again?
but really, it was only a matter of time... belly of the beast, $$$ money talks $$$. it's all newsbling in the end.?
I'll write an extremely anti-microsoft, anti-nbc anti-corporation conglomeration, vertical and horizontal integration article complete with conspiracy theories and we'll have to see how much coverage it gets.
"News" is a very powerful thing to have any control over. Rupert knows that. So does Bill. Any billionaire knows that. That's why there's less and less small indy local news every day.

the point to be taken is there is room for a simlar alternative community that doesn't want to conquer the world and is content to be small in size and large in quality.

Yis, but are there resources for such an entity?

yes....... a hobbiest could even bulid and maintain a site similar.

Only if the hobbyist is willing to foot a bill that exceeds 50k/mo. Know any hobbyists that wealthy? I don't.

50 k traffic a month translates into how much minimum advertising potential i wonder. There must be a variety of templates out there to illustrate this. I wonder where?
Finding advertising revenue is hardly a hobby i agree. The relentless optimism would kill me.

No, I meant that the cost of running just the servers exceeds $50K/mo. That isn't a traffic figure.

are you saying the servers running costs are not related to the traffic they carry?

Certainly those costs increase as you build out infrastructure to handle traffic, but what I'm saying is that even a startup site like this would require multiple servers. The "architecture" behind this site is not at all like the "architecture" behind other websites that have content management system or blog software on them. You could not run a site like this on a single server, regardless of startup traffic.

Got it.Thanks.

nope. wrong. you could host a dedicated server that can handle this traffic for less than $500.00 a month. as well as use it for other projects. unlimited traffic..... no one charges you by traffic anymore.

@vladimer kerchenko

Where ? And what does it use Novell ?

noted.

my idea was some fellow could set up a newsvine-esque site and keep it on a smaller scale with very little over-head. one could do that with leasing a dedicated server for as little as $500 a month..... like here

the idea was keep it small and focused. with virtually no staff. would it be even nearly as swell as Newsvine ? no siree bob, but the point is one could create their own ideal little version and run with it for very little if they chose to, and grow as time and money allows.

in short, a hobbiest version.

thats all.

it couldn't handle a million users, but it could definitely handle tens of thousands.

right ??

Some of the beauty of Newsvine is how simple it seems, in all its complexity. I challenge anyone to create something similar without spending a lot of money or time programming all the functionality. On top of monthly charges.

You know, Mike, my WHOLE thing all along is the idea of "baiting" people with the promise of a pay-off for their work while you and yours were the ones really cashing in. I used the phrase "bait and switch" and I have been proven true.

If you had just dropped the pay for seeding thing like I suggested from the outset, I and others wouldn't be pissed off at your "success". Your tactics smack of ethical failure. You promised community and then cashed in!

Mike, my WHOLE thing all along is the idea of "baiting" people with the promise of a pay-off for their work

What promises were made that didn't come to fruition? Did you not receive the 90% ad revenue from your column as promised?

no no, i don't think it would simple at all.... the hobbiest would have to be an ace programmer and also have design chops or a designer to help. there would be a lot of time spent, but the monthly fees could be controlled.

as for you neron, i don't think there was any baiting at all.... the newsvine team has done a phenomenal job and they deserve every penny from the sale and all the accolades as well.

they created an amazing site that has social and political relevance....... thank you Newsvine !!!

word.

and some people may not understand that the MSNBC scenario virtually ensures Newsvines longevity.... something we users should appreciate and be thankful for.

You know, Mike, my WHOLE thing all along is the idea of "baiting" people with the promise of a pay-off for their work while you and yours were the ones really cashing in. I used the phrase "bait and switch" and I have been proven true.

If you had just dropped the pay for seeding thing like I suggested from the outset, I and others wouldn't be pissed off at your "success". Your tactics smack of ethical failure. You promised community and then cashed in!

They promised you 90% of the ad-revenue you generated, and you got precisely that. What part of it is "bait and switch?" They have given their users what they promised them, and it is more than most places would ever dream of giving to their users.

Newsvine is not a non-profit organization. It exists to make money, as do all businesses. Whether there are other motivations or not, the first requirement of a business is to turn a profit. The difference between Newsvine, though, is Newsvine not only instantly gives its users more exposure for their work than they could generate on their own (unless they are some of the top bloggers in the world), but they also give them 90% of the ad revenue they generate. The exposure Newsvine gives is reason enough to participate. Them giving each user almost all of the ad revenue they make is completely unnecessary, and is something that sets them apart from other businesses.

I have no idea how you could even dare question Mike's ethics over the pay paradigm here. As a business, it would be perfectly ethical for them to keep 100% of the ad revenue generated. Newsvine is providing an excellent UI, column, and community for its users; this is an incredible service, and people are lucky to receive it for free. Newsvine, though, did not leave well enough alone, and jumped ahead several steps by giving users not only a fraction of the their ad revenue, but virtually all of it.

The people behind Newsvine have worked incredibly hard to give us this great website. They have taken a lot of risk. They have every right in the world to make a profit off of their fortitude and vision, and it is insulting to all hard working people in the world for you to claim that the Newsvine team should put much of their lives into something and not receive a return.

Neron, I haven't seen you here in a while. You're still advocating the AntiChrist (?) and you're busting on a company's ethics? I don't know that that computes.

Neron,

Stop it or you'll make baby Mykola cry.

;)

I don't know a thing about the technology or the costs of running this kind of operation. That said, this site didn't promise me anything that wasn't delivered. I've only met Calvin in person, but if he's an indication, the rest of the folks are most likely straight up guys as well. All I post are my version of crappy poetry, and I didn't even know there was a revenue side to this operation for the first six months I was here. What I have received, and am incredibly grateful for, is an occasional dialog with some pretty bright people, who would never have been in my life without Newsvine.
I know some others who feel pretty much the same way, so I'm guessing that we're going to stick around and see how this all plays out. In the meantime, and for the record, thank you, Mike, Mark, Calvin, et al, for giving me a forum to unload on, because it's been a hell of a lot more rewarding than I ever figured it would be.

I have no idea what that attack from Neron was all about. But it was totally uncalled for. Mike, Calvin, Tom et al have put in a lot of added value for this community and most Viners have reciprocated with their input. That has led to the last 8 months on Newsvine a (mostly) enjoyable, rewarding and enlightening experience.

I seem to remember Neron saying a few months ago on a monthly revenue article that he was unhappy with his cut (not that I have ever known him as a prolific writer/seeder) and vowing to never return. Why he did with his vitriol is a mystery. Smacks of hypocrisy.

lughshand
I agree. Newsvine's given me some sparkling personalities, an audience, the occasional telling off I sorely require and an additional excuse to go out of my way to party.
Oh and it's learnt me stuff and made me think and cured my syphilis such that my nose grew back.

I've made friends, tested them, found them amenable to doing good works in the real world.
And I've lent on their generousity.

So for all my protective bitterness I'm grateful.

Will Microsoft sponsor the next Newsvine Drinking Contest? I'll send them my receipts?

LaeF1 @ 20.4

it's all newsbling in the end.?

newsbling.com. Good name. Somebody already owns it.

"News" is a very powerful thing to have any control over. Rupert knows that. So does Bill. Any billionaire knows that. That's why there's less and less small indy local news every day.

Amen and well said.