In 2003, as a grad student at NYU, I created a site called Neighbornode, which was a series of bulletin boards for local neighborhood residents to log on to and talk to each other in cities. The site was very simple, and to be totally honest a bit of a hack (I was never a fabulous coder). But the idea alone was enough to attract a good amount of attention and interest from…

Yesterday’s reports of MSNBC’s acquisition of Adrian Holovaty’s Everyblock have generally treated the latter as a “hyperlocal news service.” And to be sure, this is abetted by some of the language Everyblock itself uses to frame and describe what it offers: a “news feed for your block” which can help you “find news nearby.” But for whatever it’s worth, I’ve never understood Everyblock’s fundamental proposition in quite this way, and here’s why I think understanding what it offers as “news” is giving it short shrift