Hyperlocal news business EveryBlock, an early pioneer in data-driven news aggregation, has been shut down by parent NBC News, it announced today.

EveryBlock launched in late 2007 with the promise of aggregating community news you’d want to know about. It was acquired by MSNBC in 2009 and later went under NBC’s control after MSNBC.com became fully owned by NBC.

The company says that “massive” changes happening in the news industry (most likely the inability to make much money from advertising) was the reason it shut down. It writes in a blog post today:

We’re sorry to report that EveryBlock has closed its doors.

It’s no secret that the news industry is in the midst of a massive change. Within the world of neighborhood news there’s an exciting pace of innovation yet increasing challenges to building a profitable business. Though EveryBlock has been able to build an engaged community over the years, we’re faced with the decision to wrap things up.

Thank you for having let us play a role in how you get your neighborhood news. Thanks for the contributions, for the questions, and for allowing us to connect you to each other, in many cases to make great things happen in your community. Along the way, we hope we’ve helped you be a better neighbor.

While EveryBlock could have potentially been saved by selling it off or asking for community donations (something like what Andrew Sullivan did or a Kickstarter campaign), NBC News says it did not see any other option for EveryBlock besides simply shutting it down.

“I understand that the EveryBlock community is disappointed,” Vivian Schiller, SVP and chief digital officer of NBC News, told Poynter. “So are we. We looked at various options to keep this going, but none of them were viable. It was a tough call to make.”

Disappointed may be an understatement. The post announcing the site’s closing currently has more than 530 comments. The highest-rated comment is a complaint about how the community received no warning about the shutdown, leaving them with no ability to save information or stay in touch with other members of the community:

Thanks for just turning it off with zero warning or notice. Thanks for letting us get contact information for friends we had made on the site. Thanks for letting us copy information and threads that we wanted to keep.

This was handled extremely poorly.

Closed sign photo via FrancescoCorticchia /Shutterstock

This is Part 4 of a four-part series about what you need to know about the entire value chain of doing business development and partnerships at a startup company. The posts are skewed for product integrations on third-party websites. Check out Part 3 to learn what you need to close a deal. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Boom! Deal closed. They signed the contract or began integration of your offering. Don’t take out the champagne just yet. You are not out of the woods (and probably will never be if you have a worthwhile business to steal).

Launching the partnership and managing the relationship may not be the most talked about part of the cycle but it is probably the most important.

Launching A Partnership

There are a few ways you can go about launching partnerships. If you are releasing new features, and have a few third-party integrations for the launch then it is worthwhile embargoing the announcement to a few outlets. Sometimes bigger outlets lead (WSJ, NYT, BW, Forbes, Fortune, CNN, Fast Company, Wired, etc) and get the post out a few minutes before. Other times you don’t have a major outlet leading but you have all the awesome people at Venturebeat, TC, Business Insider, Mashable, The Next Web, Pandodaily, Betabeat, The Verge, GigaOM, RRW, etc., release it at the same time.

I recommend going the embargoed route if you have multiple launch partners, this way you can give different stories to each outlet. Readers don’t like reading and press doesn’t like writing the same thing over and over. When I was at Aviary, we would write up stories on a whiteboard and then match up the appropriate outlets based on readership. I learned this from press-extraordinaire and Aviary co-founder, Michael Galpert.

If you don’t have a major feature announcement and only have one big partner coming on board, then it is worthwhile giving it as an exclusive to one major outlet. If you don’t have a major feature announcement and the partner isn’t a big one (which isn’t a bad thing, just a fact), then you should write a blog post, include them in the next blast out to your users, and share it on FB and Twitter. You should always promote integrations of your product, by helping expose partners to your user-base.

We’ve Launched, Now What?

Hopefully you’ve had a successful launch and the partner is very happy with the outcome. Now it’s time to make sure they continue to stay happy. Make sure your partner support is astounding! Listen to their feedback. If you have something worthwhile there will probably be a competitor vying for the same deal.

If your partner is talking to you and giving you feedback, listen! Take their feedback, comments, etc., and turn it into an improved solution for them. This will help you keep their business for the long run. Why would they switch to your competitor when they know you will listen and help them with any problem? They wouldn’t.

Don’t be afraid to give your partner some feedback on the integration. However, tread carefully. If their integration looks a bit off (i.e. they added an edit button with your photo editor but hid it under a drop-down), then try to show them the light as to how the integration can be improved.

Wrap Up

In these past four posts, I’ve written about identifying and connecting with companies, pitching and closing, and now launching and managing. These tips will definitely come in handy if you are getting started in the partnerships world. There is a lot more to learn and as I learn I will try my best to share any additional insights with you. Now go out there and close some deals.

Alex Taub leads business development and partnerships at Dwolla. He blogs at AlexsTechThoughts.com.

Photo via OneAustin/Flickr

This is Part 3 of a four-part series about things you should know about the entire value chain of doing business development and partnerships at a startup company. The posts are skewed for product integrations on third-party websites. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Before I begin discussing closing, I would recommend that no matter what I write below, the best way to learn how to really close deals is to work under someone who has done it many times and can teach you the craft. You can be a natural born pitchman/woman, but there is no such thing as a natural born closer. If you are a junior employee and have the opportunity to jump to the majors and run the show or work under a founder or a VP of BD/Partnerships to learn the fundamentals- work under the seasoned pro.

Now, here is what you need to know about closing:

Understanding Why Someone Would Want To Work With You

If you want to work with Company X, you’d better bring something to the table. I’ve written a post before about The Four Golden Rules Of Partnerships. This is really where they apply. Either you are going to make Company X money, save Company X money, grow Company X’s userbase, or improve Company X’s product. These are the only four major reasons why Company X would want to work with you.

What Are They Focused On?

After you identify what it is you offer Company X (it may be only one, two, three, or all four of the golden rules), then you need to know where the company is on their roadmap (i.e. what are they focused on?). There are three stages in business: product development, scaling, and monetization. If you want to work with Company X and your partnership would help monetization efforts, when they are just focused on product building, it probably wouldn’t be a good fit at this moment. If you can help with scaling when they are focused on making money, then you probably won’t partner.

Let’s take Tumblr as an example. Presently, Tumblr is in monetization phase. They have scaled unlike many others and are looking to monetize and turn themselves into a business. If you came to Tumblr with a user acquisition or product improvement partnership (unless the product integration made them money) they would most likely not be interested in partnering at this time.

How Much Can You Help Them?

After you have identified what you have to offer and understand where the company is in their roadmap, the next big question you need to think about is how deeply you can affect the other side. Take a company like AOL. If you want to work with AOL, and you offer a way to grow their userbase, the question is, “well, how many new users will you bring?” If that number is five users, then you definitely don’t have anything to talk about. But if that number is 50,000 new users a day then maybe that’s interesting enough for them to explore further.

Have You Done It With Anyone Else Before?

After all is said and done, the big question is, “Can you prove it?” You can talk a good talk, but all the company really cares about is if you will be able to do what you say you are capable of. If so, can you prove it with use cases or examples of other companies you have worked with to make a much stronger case.

Timing And Motivators For Partnerships

One of the major elements for product integrations is how timing is everything. Sometimes your timing may be off at first connection, but keeping in touch with the other side could lead to something in 3-6 months. One closing trick I have come to see successful a few times over I’ve dubbed the “Launch Partner Strategy.” This is best used for launching new features.

Instead of just pushing out a new feature, you try and wrap a few companies actually involved with the launch (and subsequently integrating your product offering). This only works if you can pre-sell these companies on what is in the hopper (not an easy task to get someone to commit to integrating something before it is ready). But if done well, it can turn your medium-sized announcement into a mushroom cloud type of ripple effect. Having great examples to point to from the get-go can make all the difference.

As I said in the beginning, closing deals is not an easy task and there is no such thing as a  born closer. Learning the ropes from an expert, experienced deal-closing veteran is the only way to do it. Be wary of being the guy/girl in charge of closing deals for a company, without the proper experience. Quit that job, go to work for a closing machine and then become the closing machine yourself.

Alex Taub leads business development and partnerships at Dwolla. He blogs at AlexsTechThoughts.com.

Mariano Rivera photo via Keith Allison/Flickr