YourStreet Blog

Well, that was fun

If you've ever publicly launched a website, you'll know the mix of exhaustion, nervousness and anticipation our team went through over the last few days.  We're thrilled that the YourStreet website withstood the traffic onslaught without breaking a sweat (thank you engineers!). 

We're also very excited about the great response YourStreet has been getting from both press and users.  The site has been called "elegant", "one of the best mash-ups ever", and "a great achievement."  Thank you one and all for your kind comments.

We got lots of press about the launch.  Here a few of the highlights:

TechCrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/29/maps-news-yourstreet/

Read/WriteWeb: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yourstreet_relaunches.php#more

AppScout: http://www.appscout.com/2007/10/yourstreet_connects_you_to_you.php

Mashable: http://mashable.com/2007/10/29/yourstreets-relaunches/

KillerStartUps: http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/yourstreet—Everything-on-your-Neighborhood/

Download Squad: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/10/29/yourstreet-find-news-and-conversations-in-your-backyard/

Screenwerk: http://gesterling.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/yourstreet-now-topix-meets-outsidein/

Sellsius Real Estate Blog:  http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/cool-websites/local-news-mapped-and-yapped-on-yourstreet/2007/10/30/

And thanks to DemoGirl for her screencast of YourStreet: http://flash.screeniac.com/yourstreet-dg/yourstreet-dg.html?TB_iframe=true&height=590&width=1050

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to write about YourStreet or come by the site.  Even though we've launched, any and all feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

See you on YourStreet!

James Nicholson
Founder

YourStreet Launches Tuesday, Oct. 30th

After much behind the scenes tinkering, we are very pleased to announce that YourStreet will launch next Tuesday, Oct. 30th.  You can check out a preview of the site at www.yourstreet.com.  A press release, fact sheet, screen shot, and logo are all available in the Press Room area to the right.

YourStreet is the first website to index and map thousands of local articles, blogs, and conversations down to the street level.  YourStreet fundamentally changes how you discover and connect with the information that impacts you most – what’s going on in your town, your neighborhood and even your block.

Newspapers and blogs publish a huge amount of local news every day, but until now finding relevant local information about your immediate environment has been extremely difficult. YourStreet’s unique map-based interface brings “hyperlocal” content to the next level, allowing users to explore their community in an entirely new way.

YourStreet uses a highly sophisticated algorithm that leverages natural language processing to scan and interpret news articles, extracting highly specific location information.  Unlike other news aggregation sites, YourStreet goes far beyond keyword matching – the algorithm can identify references to local entities like schools, sports stadiums, airports, bridges, and determine their exact latitude and longitude, giving users unparalleled access to local information.  For the first time you can visually experience the news by not only seeing what’s happening but also where it’s happening.

YourStreet also provides users with the ability to start local conversations, add articles to the site, and post user profiles, creating a layer of unique user generated content on top of the aggregated news articles.

The YourStreet.com website launches with coverage of more than 35,000 locations across the United States, mapping over 10,000 articles per day from more than 5,000 news sources.

The entire YourStreet team is very excited to finally unveil what we've been working on for the better part of a year.  We hope you'll find the site fun and informative.  We welcome any feedback you may have about the site, so please leave comments here or use the Feedback form linked to at the bottom of each page on the site.

Getting ready...

Big thanks to everyone who helped test the YourStreet beta site.  Your suggestions and feedback are much appreciated.  We got to many of your suggestions and hopefully all of the bugs you ran into.

We're now putting the finishing touches on the site prior to launch.  We'll be announcing the launch date in the next few days, so stay tuned!