EveryBlock Puts a New Spin on Hyper-Local

New hyperlocal content aggregator Everyblock has launched in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. By bringing together locally oriented blogs, reviews and images, it joins the ranks of outside.in, Placeblogger and (more recently) Topix.

Specifically, it scrapes and supplies geotagged Flickr images, reviews from Yelp, and lost and found items from Craigslist. But it also attempts to differentiate itself with more specific and unique data feeds from government sources such as liquor licenses, restaurant inspections and crime reports.

As TechCrunch points out, this unique blend of features allows you to “check out a map of all photos taken recently in Downtown San Francisco, a list of the vehicles stolen in Chicago, or even a log of the graffiti recently cleaned up in Brooklyn.”

The actual profile of users who will be interested in this combination of features — and how great in number this user set proves to be — is yet to be seen. People looking to visit or move to an area come to mind, and for that reason it could make sense as a component to real estate search (look for the company to “widgetize” the product in the future, in order to live in other places such as Zillow or StreetAdvisor).

For now, the unique feed availability and differentiation strategy is interesting and arguably necessary in a field of hyper-local search destinations that is somewhat crowded. And if you like what you see, the site offers neighborhood-specific RSS feeds so you can keep tabs on stolen vehicles, lost and found items, and liquor license transfers in your area.

The company comes to us care of a $1.1 million grant from the Knight Foundation whose “News Challenge” awards companies that create unique ways to deliver local news.