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FLORA: I think they'e making assumptions about the intelligence of audience that other news organizations don't do. That it doesn't have to be spelled out. You can let people explore the story in their own way, which is really cool.
Adrian Holovaty is Changing How Local News is Covered
chicagopublicradio.org - 25 weeks ago - 439 views
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The money quote perhaps? "JIM COUDAL: I would say and maybe this is heresy but I would say the idea of EveryBlock has had much more impact than EveryBlock has."
Does Coudal have a point? And what, for that matter, would constitute "impact?"
I'm glad Cuddy included that quote in the story. He's running this thing on grant money for now. So it's not a proven model yet.
That site is pretty 'effing cool, but I wonder why people wouldn't just go to the sites that provide the original data that they syndicate. If you're looking for real estate info, are you going to go to Everyblock or a dedicated real estate site? If you're looking for photos of a place, are you going to go there or just go straight to Flickr?
Everyblock lets you pick a point in Chicago (or other cities I guess) and see stuff from about 10-12 other places that happens to be located around that point. That's the difference. So yeah, you could go to Flickr and other sites that feed stuff into Everyblock, but Everyblock will let you organize what you see around where you live (or where your boyfriend lives, in my case.) I subscribed to the e-mail list for a while, but eventually I noticed I wasn't read it much so I signed off, around the same time I signed out of 2-3 other lists (bye-bye Thrillist).
I still get Obama spam.
Gotta learn to "just say no" to e-mail lists, Len!
The other thing Everyblock does is convince government bodies to release better data. A lot of the info on their site wouldn't be easily accessible if they hadn't done the legwork to get it out there...
Is that really true though? Has EB actually convinced some government bodies to release info that was previously not available to the public? I honestly don't know. If they have, kudos.
Well, I wouldn't read it as being "heresey" so much as acknowledgment that it takes time for stuff to take off. The idea of what these people want to do is great and exciting: a customizeable newspaper made up of stuff that's already on the web in less useful formats. But when you see the actual product, you realize that a lot of that info just isn't all that interesting. Plus, it's overwhelming! I couldn't keep up with all the rapes and robberies happening in my hood. Not sure why I'd want to do that, actually.
I had the same exact experience. It seems like it should be an amazing idea, but it just doesn't pan out. And this is coming from someone PASSIONATE about local news and local info.
I think it's tedious. It's cool if you're just after data, but I want information and analysis, in context, and that's not the same thing. I also appreciate writing, which is something you get in print and not in aggregators.
That's kind of what the quote from the boss man gets at in the summary up top, right? Everyblock is banking on the idea that people are able to pull in their own context using google, RSS, twitter and all the other tools on the web. All they need to do is provide some data points you didn't know about.
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