One of my favorite companies to follow in the crowdsourced news business has always been NowPublic. My infatuation began with an interview I did with their CMO Mike Tippet sometime last September. The one feature that seemed far ahead of it’s time still today were the tools they created to curate data live as it came across the real time web.
While we have dozens of aggregators ranging from the simple (like Kawasaki’s AllTop) to the gaudy (like Twazzup), very few tools have emerged that allow editors and content producers to make sense of trusted sources when news inevitably breaks ahead of the news cycle on Twitter.
That’s why the Examiner has an incredible asset in it’s arsenal now that they’ve made an acquisition of the company. I recieved a press release yesterday (which I scanned in between server rebuilds), but Duncan Riley has a write-up over at the Inquisitr with the pertinent facts:
Citizen journalism come hyperlocal play Examiner.com has acquired Canadian CitJ site NowPublic for a sum reported to be around the $25 million mark.
Along with a global network of citizen reporters, NowPublic also owns the former Guy Kawasaki site Truemors. NowPublic was founded 2005 and took $12 million over three rounds that included Brightspark Ventures and Growthworks Capital.
Hyperlocal may be the draw for the Examiner, since Heritage Media is struggling to find it’s place in the new media landscape, but what may be one of their best undiscovered assets in this purchase will be the tools to curate the live, real time web.
