Posts Categorized as "News"

14
Sep 10

Publishers, the Outside.in API is Here!

Posted by camilla in Announcements / CNN / Development & Features / General / News / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

As you may have already heard, we just released a brand new Outside.in Hyperlocal News API — the latest addition to Outside.in for Publishers suite of powerful publisher tools to create hyperlocal experiences easily, efficiently, and economically. We built the API for creative and savvy publishers looking to innovate ways to engage their consumers with hyperlocal news and information.

What can the API do? Quite a bit. Publishers can build and design mobile apps to custom web experiences by tapping into our massive database of more than 54,000 sources from local bloggers, journalists and mainstream sources for any neighborhood, city, state, and ZIP in the U.S. API users can filter the results by various parameters such as date, number of stories, source attributes (e.g., vertical/category, format, author type), and keywords. A few ideas:

  • Take local to the next level by bundling the right source of neighborhood news targeted at specific demographics like moms, foodies, or college students
  • Add dimension to existing personalization experiences by empowering readers to find and save news for neighborhoods they care about

What clever ideas do you have?  Get going and introduce the API to your developers: send them to check out the documentation on our API portal where they can get an API key to start playing around.

What are the benefits?

  • User Engagement & Advertising Opportunities: The API opens the door to tons of local content that publishers can slice and dice to fit their editorial and user needs, all of which create robust streams of targeted advertising inventory.
  • Reliability and Speed: Outside.in provides a proven hyperlocal platform that meets the scale and performance needs of some of web’s biggest publishers such as CNN, Tribune, The New York Post, and MediaGeneral (with more to announce in the near future). In fact, we first previewed the API earlier this year to power the local news on CNN.com and the CNN iPhone app.
  • Hyperlocal Expertise and Support: With so many possibilities to explore, our Partner Relations team is available and happy to help publishers vet ideas and provide the necessary guidance and support along the way.

How do I get started?

1.     Check out the details here and introduce your developers to the API. Have them sign up for a dev key to see what the API is capable of and take it for a test spin.

2.     Give us a shout via email to discuss any of the following:

  • Terms for a commercial relationship. (Note that the API is free for non-commercial use up to 5,000 queries per day.)
  • Enable curation on API implementations via the Outside.in Hyperlocal Publisher Dashboard.
  • Transition to an API-powered experience. (If you are an existing Outside.in for Publishers partner, we can generate a separate key for you to ensure that the API inherits your curation settings from the Publisher Dashboard.)

There is a lot to take advantage of, so start building your own unique hyperlocal experience today!  We can’t wait to see what you will create!

*P.S. Follow @outsideinAPI for the latest scoop on the API.

1
Sep 10

We’re Sponsoring the ‘HubPages Marks the Spot’ Contest

Posted by Esther Brown in Announcements / Bloggers We Love / Industry Notes & Commentary / News — View Comments

Attention bloggers: this is just a quick post to let you know that we’re  sponsoring HubPages’ HubPages Marks the Spot contest, which begins today and runs through the 29th of the month.

HubPages focuses on evergreen content– i.e., content that will be valuable for months and years to come– and we find that a lot of evergreen content can be hyperlocal in nature as well. For instance, when a blogger writes about a local restaurant he or she visited, that post is going to be valuable for some time, not just for a fleeting moment or two. That’s why we’re happy to sponsor this contest for HubPages.

A few things to consider: if you enter, you may win sweet prizes, including cold, hard cash (and ongoing royalties, too). To enter, you have to publish topical articles (what they call “Hubs”) on your favorite sandwich joints, art museums, bowling alleys, tattoo parlors, and all other sorts of local attractions; each week has a different category.

Here’s an example: Best Brunch Spots in Oakland, California

Over $4,000 in cash prizes are up for grabs, given out throughout the month, so you can potentially win no matter when you start publishing (and you’ll continue to earn via ad revenue on your Hubs for years to come). Plus, HubPages tells us there are lots of people earning some pretty decent money on the Hubs they’ve published.

Ready to start? Jump to the contest page and read the rules (important!) on the travel and places page.

27
Jul 10

Outside.in Adds Russell Fradin to Board of Directors

Posted by mark in Announcements / General / News — View Comments

It’s rare to find people with both great entrepreneurial experience and a passion for sharing their knowledge.

When I met Russ Fradin, CEO of Adify Corporation, a few years ago, I was immediately impressed with his intelligence, energy and successful track record. Russ has been in the online media space for years at game-changing companies like Flycast and Comscore. He’s an expert at building valuable businesses.

When we at Outside.in find extraordinary talent, we do everything we can to get them on board to help build our business.

So I’m thrilled to share that Russ has agreed to join our Board as an Independent Director. In the short time that we’ve been working together, Russ has already proven to be invaluable with his insight, experience and no-nonsense style.

Other current Board members include Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, early investors Andrew Karsch and Mark Bailey, founder Steven Johnson, and me.

We’re excited to have Russ on the Board and are looking forward to introducing more exciting additions to our management team in the coming weeks.

1
Jul 10

Bloggers We Love: Your Stories Are LIVE on CNN.com!

Posted by Esther Brown in Bloggers We Love / CNN / Development & Features / General / News / Tips & Tricks — View Comments

As you may know, on April 20th, Outside.in shipped the first phase of our collaboration with CNN and began providing the local headlines on CNN.com. Then, on June 24, we started powering a local news module on CNN’s U.S. News page, and the results have been solid from there as well. In the first few weeks of looking at our implementations across CNN’s website, I’ve noticed some great visibility of ‘Bloggers We Love’ – blog stories are showing up on CNN.com (and CNN.com/US) from cities and towns all over the country, and it’s pretty awesome.

If you’ve registered with Outside.in and you haven’t yet seen your stories appearing on CNN.com (or Outside.in, for that matter), there are a couple things you can do to help your posts appear (but keep in mind CNN always has the last word on which headlines show up on their site):

  • FULL TEXT RSS: Be sure you are publishing a full-text RSS feed.
  • LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: Be sure to mention plenty of geo information in your posts.
  • FRESH IS BEST: Post often, because the stories on CNN are the most recent stories in our ecosystem, and bloggers share that ecosystem with mainstream media sources, who tend to publish quite often. To make sure your content shows up, you’ve got to make sure it’s current.

    • We’re happy to see so many bloggers getting the spotlight they deserve. Here are a few examples I spotted on CNN.com on a recent morning:

    Here’s an example from CNN’s U.S. News page as well:

    11
    Jun 10

    Outside.in Named to 2010 AOE100

    Posted by Esther Brown in Announcements / Industry Notes & Commentary / News — View Comments

    On June 9, 2010, AlwaysOn announced the ’2010 AlwaysOn East Top 100 Private Companies,’ including Outside.in in the category of digital media. According to AlwaysOn, “The AOE100 comprises East Coast companies pioneering in cloud computing and SaaS, digital media, and greentech.”

    Others listed in AOE Top 100 included Foursquare, Gilt Groupe and Groupon, to name only a few.

    Outside.in and the other winners will be honored at Venture Summit East 2010, to be held at Harvard Business School from June 21st-23rd, 2010.

    To see the full list of the AOE100, please click here.

    Enhanced by Zemanta
    20
    May 10

    StarNewsOnline Goes Hyperlocal with Outside.in

    Posted by Jared in Announcements / General / News / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

    Last weekend, we launched MyBackyard with StarNewsOnline of Wilmington, NC.  MyBackyard enables its readers to browse everything from news to real estate to events in dozens of neighborhoods in Wilmington.  Vaughn Hagerty, an enterprising developer at StarNews, leads the project and sings the praises of our hyperlocal platform, Outside.in for Publishers:

    MyBackyard requires accurate address-level location information for items in our news feed. In addition, we need to have the option to attach more than one lat/long to a piece of content if necessary. Doing this accurately and consistently really requires a human editor with easy-to-use curation tools. We explored a few options, and Outside.in’s publisher tools fit the requirements nicely. Using them, a single editor can maintain our feeds in about 20 minutes a day.

    We’re thrilled to have StarNewsOnline kick off our work with The New York Times Regional News Group and proud to have a product that meets their needs so well.

    Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
    23
    Apr 10

    APRIL 30, 2010 – NYC: Wharton hosts ‘The Future of Publishing,’ Conference, Outside.In CEO Mark Josephson to Participate

    Posted by Esther Brown in Announcements / Events / General / Industry Notes & Commentary / News — View Comments

    One week from today, on April 30, the University of Pennsylvania‘s Wharton School of Business will be hosting a conference entitled ‘The Future of Publishing: Technology, Publishing and Academia Build a Forum for Solutions.’ The conference will be held at the Marriot Marquis here in New York City (7:30 AM – 7:00 PM), and our CEO, Mark Josephson, will be participating as a panelist.

    It should be a fantastic event and we really hope you can make it!

    Here are more details, from Wharton’s website:

    Traditional publishing models have been disrupted, fragmented and dissolved. For books, magazines or newspapers, new behaviors and technologies have changed the face of publishing forever. Join the Wharton Lab for Innovation in Publishing (part of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, Knowledge@Wharton, and Wharton School Publishing to examine the new technologies and strategies that impact all facets of the industry to help bring actionable answers to publishing executives. Conference highlights include:

    * Keynote addresses from Gordon Crovitz, Co-Founder of Press+ (a service of Journalism Online) and Martin Nisenholtz, Senior Vice President for Digital Operations at The New York Times Company
    * Panel discussions spanning the consumer, publisher and delivery of the future, the value of social media in publishing and the mobility of new content with speakers from Hearst Interactive, Google, Simon & Schuster, Condé Nast, Wall Street Journal, Ipsos Mendelsohn, Demand Media, Digg.com, Hyperion Books, Fast Pencil, Open Road Media, Outside.In, NBC Universal, Flurry, and many more
    * Open forum style where attendees will be strongly encouraged to engage in discussion and brainstorming in the panel workshops

    Mark will be participating in a salon panel entitled ‘Hyperlocal Content’, in the afternoon:

    This panel will examine geographic-specific content development mechanisms and how many platforms are moving to a model of “content by consumers for consumers.” As consumers narrow their focus, this hyperlocal strategy seems to create more super-niche markets.

    Eric Bradlow, Co-Director, Wharton Interactive Media Initiative

    Barbara Bry, Associate Publisher and Executive Editor, U.S. Local News Network
    Mark Josephson, CEO, Outside.In
    Rob King, Executive Editor, ESPN.com
    Darian Shirazi, CEO, Fwix

    Register Now or read more about what promises to be a really engaging conference!

    Related articles by Zemanta
    Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
    1
    Mar 10

    Outside.in Loves Local Bloggers

    Posted by Esther Brown in Announcements / Bloggers We Love / General / News — View Comments

    At Outside.in, we’re all about local content, and some of the best sources of that content are local bloggers that live and write in neighborhoods all across the country. They write about restaurants, business, town council meetings, fishing, nightlife, art, outdoor adventure, real estate, music and much more.

    While some may pursue blogging as their career, many others might have full time jobs that have little or nothing to do with their blogs. In either case, we believe that a love for writing and a passion for the place they call home (be it love or hate) are common amongst all local bloggers.

    As an organization that is constantly inspired by the energy and enthusiasm of local bloggers, we want to provide them with an opportunity to tell you who they are and what they do.  So, we’re continuing our series aimed at shining a light on the awesome work of these individuals, and we’ll be interviewing local bloggers on a regular basis — sharing their stories, experiences, advice and passion with you.

    If you’d like to be featured in our ‘Bloggers We Love’ series (or you’d like to nominate your favorite local blogger(s) for inclusion), we’d love to hear from you! Simply send an email to me at esther[at]outside[dot]in. I’m Outside.in’s new Community Manager and I’d love to get to know you better.

    Our first interview will be posted tomorrow, so stay tuned!

    29
    Sep 09

    Outside.in Partner Roster Keeps Growing with the Addition of Dow Jones Local

    Posted by camilla in Announcements / Events / General / News / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

    seacoast online logo

    Dow Jones Local Media Group, which operates community newspapers in California, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania, has recently partnered with Outside.in to power “Your Town” news sections on their sites.

    The first site we are live with is SeacoastOnline.com, where you can find an Outside.in powered map of the Portsmouth, NH metro area on their homepage.

    seacoast online homepage map

    Outside.in for Publishers was also used to create Neighborhood News Pages for some of their key “Your Town” neighborhoods. Check out the Hampton or Portsmouth town pages where they have aggregated some great local content.

    This partnership is a great example of how we collaborate with local media partners in smaller markets to expand our coverage and help publishers reach a hyperlocal audience.

    18
    Sep 09

    New York Post, Welcome to Outside.in for Publishers!

    Posted by camilla in Announcements / General / News / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

    Ever since the beta launch of Outside.in for Publishers, we’ve been busy over here at Outside.in headquarters working with numerous local publishers in markets all over the country. And as we continue to talk to interested publishers and help existing partners optimize their online local experience, we often get asked the same question: “What other companies are you working with?” Thus, we recently started to announce new (and existing) partners on this blog (so be sure to check in often). Well, here’s one of our newest: the New York Post.

    The New York Post recently launched a nifty redesign of their site NYPOST.com and have expanded their Local News section. There are separate sections for each of the five boroughs, and better yet, users can now drill into specific neighborhoods within each of the boroughs for hyperlocal news. You can see the Neighborhood News Pages in action whether you’re looking for Brooklyn news or the latest on Chelsea. With Outside.in for Publishers, NYPOST.com is able to provide their users with comprehensive local coverage amassed from news outlets and local blogs.

    We’re excited to be working with the New York Post team and welcome them to our growing network of publisher partners.

    picture-1

    ← Older Entries
    Newer Entries →
    Blog WebMastered by All in One Webmaster.