Everyblock is hyperlocal
Founder of Everyblock, Adrian Holovaty talks to Stephen Hutcheon about hyperlocal sites, Google and the future of media.
Stripping out crime statistics from the Chicago police department and posting them on the internet for people to see crime levels in their neighbourhood led to a website that is redefining the idea of news.
Five years ago Adrian Holovaty stripped out the statistics and reorganised them in a much more readable format, separating them to detail the types of crime, peak times and which places to avoid.
Chicagocrime.org became an instant hit and spawned the idea for Everyblock, a website launched in December 2007 that that brings a level of detail to news that challenges local media.
Information such as which homes have been sold nearby and which restaurant has been raided by the health authorities is on Everyblock, a service that has expanded to cover 15 American cities.
Using software technology called screen scrapers, Everyblock strips out data from the government websites.
''Very little of what we publish on our site is original. In fact none of it is original. We have six people covering 15 cities and we aim to absolutely automate everything … if anything takes any human effort it better be a one-time cost,'' Mr Holovaty said, explaining his model.
''There's huge value in just organising things. What is out there that is good information but not organised very well.''
Nothing is ever deleted; he says everything should have an infinite shelf life, a concept he calls 'living information'.
Mr Holovaty also took aim at the mainstream media for dumping too much information on readers rather than adding to one article continuously, much like Wikipedia does.
He said media companies should work out how to monitor and sift through sites such as Twitter and comments appended to news stories.
