Making the first acquisition in its 11-year history, MSNBC.com, a joint venture between Microsoft and the NBC Universal division of GE, is diving into citizen journalism and social media by acquiring Newsvine.com, a six-employee startup that has helped pave the way in what is known as “participatory journalism.”
Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson will report to Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC Interactive News and publisher of msnbc.com, but otherwise, Newsvine will continue to operate independently.
Tillinghast said msnbc.com was racing to foster a community among its readers and to exploit the power of unmoderated user commentary and ranking of the news. Ideally, he said in an interview, the site would design and build its own tools, but Newsvine, headquartered in downtown Seattle a few minutes from msnbc.com’s newsroom, “is just a great fit.” [24×7]
Costco Hits $1 Billion in Online Sales
Costco.com is the newest member of the online billion dollar sales club.
For the year Costco Wholesale Corp. grew its e-commerce sales by about 39% to $1.22 billion compared with web sales of $880 million in fiscal 2006.
At the same time total revenue rose by 7% and same store sales by 6%. The company, No. 21 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, reported net income of $1.08 billion on revenue of $64.4 billion for the 2007 fiscal year compared with net income of $1.1 billion on sales of $60.1 billion in the prior year. Amazingly, the Web still accounted for only 2% of total sales. [24×7]
