While Fox bought NewRoo.com in March 2006 and Condé Nast acquired Reddit in October 2006, the series of social news site acquisitions continues with an agreement between Newsvine and msnbc.com. After talks between the two parties started in May, the deal closed for an undisclosed amount on October 5.Msnbc.com, the news website for the NBC News family and a fifty-fifty joint venture between Microsoft and NBC Universal, is also the editorially and financially separate news provider for MSN. With more than 26 million unique users, msnbc.com ranked fourth in Nielsen/NetRating's Top US News Site list in July 2007 and is set to enhance its appeal by its recent acquisition of social news site Newsvine.
Newsvine which launched in March 2006 is a small, innovative website consisting of news stories and opinions created and submitted by both professional journalists and users. In addition to viewing stories from mainstream media outlets, such as The Associated Press, Newsvine - like other social bookmarking sites - encourages users to post links for others to view. What's more, each user is provided with a blog-style column for writing articles and with the option to vote, comment and chat on other users' article pages.
Newsvine announced that the site will continue to operate independently and remain a separate brand and entity from msnbc.com. While msnbc.com have committed to maintaining and improving Newsvine's popular community features, Newsvine's technology and content will eventually be incorporated into msnbc.com.
Therefore, the deal creates a win-win situation for both parties. Newsvine users will benefit from a potentially larger audience with stories being promoted on the MSNBC homepage, while msnbc.com can take advantage of content produced by Newsvine's bustling user base. Newsvine will gain further through improved speed and server reliability.
This acquisition emphasises the importance of user-generated components for news sites and strengthens MSNBC's attempt to outrank its main competitors - namely, Yahoo! News, AOL News and CNN. Although AOL and CNN hold community features around their news offering, Newsvine's social news ecosystem enables msnbc.com to dive into so-called citizen or participatory journalism, which might prove to be crucial for the news site's positioning.
