The EveryBlock Blog

We’re looking to hire a second UI designer to join our development team at EveryBlock.

We value design highly and try to ensure everything we create is beautiful and usable. This is your chance to have a hand in all aspects of our company, from our Web site to our e-mail alerts to our mobile applications to physical marketing materials. (Ever design a bookmark?)

Beyond straight design work, you’ll have a hand in mapping out product strategy. Your contributions will be varied, your work will be interesting, and you’ll have an immediate, direct impact on the awesomeness of our service.

We like to hire polymaths. You should be as comfortable designing mockups in Photoshop as you are getting dirty in HTML and CSS. You should care deeply about design, but you should also know how to write (simple) code, as in JavaScript or Python. You should sweat details. You should be inquisitive and a quick learner. You should be ready to come to the table with ideas, and you should be willing to be wrong.

Your job responsibilities will span this list (not necessarily in order):

• Web app design
• HTML
• LESS CSS framework
• Django templates
• Chalkboard sketches
• Post-it notes
• Wireframing
• Mobile app design
• Photoshop
• Copywriting
• User testing
• jQuery

You will work very closely with the other designer and four developers. We have a low-stress environment and a culture of getting things done with as little corporate BS as possible. We have a ping pong table. We play a lot of Resistance.

You should have 4+ years experience in web design, with experience building apps from soup to launch.

Though we’re technically no longer an independent startup — we were acquired by msnbc.com in 2009 — we’re culturally very much still a startup, given that our product is still in early stages and we’re still figuring things out. It’s a very nice combination of startup culture with the financial security of working for a big company. (We have great benefits — salary, health care, 401(k), etc.) And msnbc.com is taking the long-view on us, investing in us over time and giving us years to develop a large audience and become profitable. It’s a great company to work for and now is a fantastic time to be joining our team.

You’ll need to live in the Chicago area for this position. Our office is in a comfortable loft space on the north side of Chicago, near a bunch of other startups. Several of us walk or bike to work. We’re also equidistant from the Montrose and Irving Park el stations on the Brown Line, along with several bus lines.

Apply through the official msnbc.com Jobvite site here. Thanks.

Today we’re launching an events section in each EveryBlock city.

Until now, there hasn’t been a great way to find events happening in your neighborhood. There are a bunch of events sites out there, but they suffer from three problems.

First, they focus on general-interest events — the Cubs game, the big stadium concert, the citywide festival — instead of neighborhood-scoped events. There hasn’t been a place to find the “long tail” of events.

Second, they don’t allow for geographic granularity. When you search, the smallest radius they support is 5 miles, which, from EveryBlock’s perspective, might as well be at the other end of the city.

Third, they’re siloed. Sure, you could go to your park district’s site for park district events, and to your city’s site for city-sanctioned events, and to your neighborhood association’s site for your neighborhood association’s events, but nobody collects that in one place.

Our new events section is our first step in solving these problems.

You’ll now see an events calendar on your custom EveryBlock homepage. Click that, and you’ll see upcoming events near your followed places. You can browse by date and category (clean-up, garage sale, school meeting, etc.). All of this uses the same level of geographic granularity you’ve come to know and love on EveryBlock, so that you can see events happening near a given block, neighborhood or custom location.

As with the rest of our site, the events come from a variety of sources — sites that we aggregate data from (starting with our launch partners Eventful and Time Out Chicago), plus users like you. If you’re an event organizer or otherwise know about what’s happening in your neighborhood, you can post events yourself. (Look for the "Post to EveryBlock" link at the top of each page while you're logged in.) Events also show up in your timeline and in our daily email digests, so they fit into the existing ways people use EveryBlock.

We hope this turns you on to fun neighborhood events you didn’t know about, lets you spread the word about events you’re organizing yourself and gives you more excuses to meet your neighbors and strengthen the bonds in your community.

When we redesigned EveryBlock eight months ago, our goal was to put our users and neighborhood conversations front and center.

We wanted to help people improve their communities by connecting them with their neighbors. And now that 2011 has come to a close, we’re happy to say that's happened many times, with great results.

Of course, the new year just wouldn’t be complete without a list or a recap, so we thought it would be fun to highlight some of the top "be a better neighbor" discussions on EveryBlock:

Windy City Liquors
This post started with a simple question from ladykills82 about a local business and turned into a great example of how EveryBlock can be used to rally a community together. Neighbors shared information and ultimately started a fundraiser for the business owner, who had experienced a family tragedy.

Attracting Businesses to the Neighborhood
EveryBlock neighbor Erica had the right idea when she posed a question for her neighbors about what businesses they’d like to see in their historic neighborhood. Not only did the discussion lead to some interesting suggestions, but it became the starting point for real-world action when the participants gathered their ideas together and met with their city council representative.

Organizing a Neighborhood Clean-up
Nothing's worse than walking thorough your neighborhood and seeing a bunch of trash in empty lots. So when neighbor Seth suggested a clean-up in his community, plenty of folks were willing to lend a hand. They used EveryBlock to pick a date and time, organize who would bring snacks and water, and even share some impressive before-and-after shots.

Deteriorating Train Platforms
Despite a recent renovation, neighbors began to notice the platforms at their local train station were already starting to deteriorate. Neighbor Gretchen asked other residents for advice after failing to get an answer from several city contacts. Her message spurred an active neighborhood conversation and it helped the issue gain local media attention.

Who Wants to Start a Farmer's Market?
Not all neighborhoods are fortunate enough to have an active farmers market in the summer, but that doesn't mean they can't start one. Neighbor Jeff Parker posted a message asking residents if they were interested in bringing a market to their neighborhood and after lots of planning, coordination and hard work, the neighbors helped kickstart the first market in their community in more than ten years.

These were our favorites from 2011, but discussions like this happen pretty much every day across the neighborhoods we serve. To get a sense of hot discussions happening in your city, check out our top news page (Chicago example), which is updated in real time.

We hope you and your neighbors have a wonderful 2012, and here's to another year of great neighborhood discussions!

A few months ago, EveryBlock announced plans to hire their first community management team member outside of Chicago with a community coordinator position in New York City.

While some of you may have seen posts and comments from me on the site already, I thought it was time for me to make an official introduction. As a New Yorker who is in love with her neighborhood (the East Village), I'm really excited to be on the EveryBlock team.

After working in television production for five years, I moved on to the hyperlocal news space in NYC, while also writing a lifestyle blog, Bright Lights, My City. With a strong interest in the latest happenings, from the newest restaurant openings to the unfortunate closing of the mom and pop shops that make this city special, EveryBlock was the perfect fit for me.

My job is to develop and grow the evolving EveryBlock community in NYC. I hope to connect with neighbors and bloggers, both online through social media and offline at community meetings and events. I’ll focus on helping community groups make the most out of EveryBlock by reaching more neighbors.

If you’re a leader or member of a community organization in New York, please feel free to contact me, as I’m interested in attending meetings to connect with people who are involved in their communities. In addition, I’m always looking to connect with active neighbors, from community leaders to bloggers, who are using EveryBlock to stay informed about their neighborhood, so don’t hesitate to say hello by sending me an e-mail or tweeting me at @ebnewyork.

Since EveryBlock just isn’t the same without the people who bring your neighborhood to life, we’ve made it even easier for you to invite your friends and neighbors to sign up.

Our previous “invite your friends” feature required you to cut and paste or manually enter the email addresses you wanted to include in your invitation. Now, you can add friends from your Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! or other address books with just a few clicks.

To access the “invite your friends” page, click on the account tab in the right corner of any EveryBlock page and you’ll see a link at the top of the list. You can use the pre-written message or customize your own message and include links to EveryBlock pages of interest (like a interesting neighbor message or juicy media mention about the neighborhood).

EveryBlock gets even better as more neighbors come on board, so don't be shy about helping us spread the word!

The EveryBlock community of neighbors continues to grow and we’re now looking to hire a full-time community coordinator based in Seattle.

As the EveryBlock community coordinator, you’d be responsible for helping grow and manage our community in your designated region consisting of Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, San Jose and Los Angeles. Your primary area of responsibility will be to manage all aspects of the EveryBlock community in your lead city of Seattle.

Secondary responsibilities will include moderation and user support of additional EveryBlock cities in your region.

Here’s what you’d be doing in Seattle:

• Develop and oversee city-wide plan to meet overall business objectives
• Analyze user trends to help inform marketing investment and product evolution
• Seed neighborhood-specific conversations
• Participate in relevant neighborhood conversations
• Conduct outreach to recruit engaged neighbors and neighborhood organizations
• Manage city Twitter account
• Grow existing list of EveryBlock news sources and develop relationships with neighborhood bloggers to encourage increased participation
• Edit headlines to maximize top EveryBlock news and discussions
• Attend occasional neighborhood meetings in lead city to build awareness for EveryBlock
• Proactively identify and leverage opportunities for neighborhood-specific citywide engagement (ie. snowstorms, garbage strikes, etc.)
• Regional responsibilities (includes lead city)
• Respond to user support questions
• Moderate discussions and enforce EveryBlock community guidelines

Think you have what it takes? Here’s what we’re looking for:

• 5+ years of relevant work experience
• Background in communications, marketing or journalism preferred
• Strong writing and organizational skills Active online presence (Twitter, blogging, etc.) and knowledge of social media
• Proven ability to engage with users in an online environment
Excellent judgment
• Schedule flexibility to handle community management issues as needed
• Deep knowledge of (and passion for) Seattle -- neighborhoods, restaurants, events, etc.
• Interest in helping people improve their communities
Self-motivated with ability to work independently
• You’re a serious worker but don’t take yourself too seriously

We have a low-stress environment and a culture of getting things done with as little corporate BS as possible.

Though we're technically no longer an independent startup -- we were acquired by msnbc.com in 2009 -- we're culturally very much still a startup, given that our product is still in early stages and we're still figuring things out. It's a very nice combination of startup culture with the financial security of working for a big company. (We have great benefits -- salary, health care, 401(k), etc.) And msnbc.com is taking the long-view on us, investing in us over time and giving us years to develop a large audience and become profitable. It's a great company to work for and now is a fantastic time to be joining our team. We just hired a new president, plus we recently launched a major redesign that's been almost universally loved, and, most importantly, we're getting momentum and critical mass in more and more neighborhoods.

Please check out the official job posting if you’d like to apply.

We all know that neighborhood businesses play a significant role in shaping our communities. On EveryBlock, business openings, closings and suggestions often lead to some of our most active news items and neighbor messages.

A recent discussion in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago has not only become the starting point for ideas and conversation, but it has prompted neighbors to come together in real life to improve their community.

It all began with a message from Erica in Bronzeville:

Residents of Bronzeville and surrounding areas, let's put our heads together and brainstorm the types of businesses that we'd like in our neighborhood! Step 1: Give 1-3 suggestions, along with where you think the businesses should be located. I'll leave this open for a few days and we'll move onto Step 2, which will be counting the suggestions and narrowing down to the top three suggestions. After that, we'll take it from there. Thanks in advance!

Soon, neighbors started to add their recommendations, suggesting ideas ranging from coffee shops to a public library branch.

Fast forward to a month after Erica’s initial post and she has formed a task force with her EveryBlock neighbors. Not only have they met in person, but their local city council representative has expressed interest in hearing more about their ideas.

"Everyblock has proven to be a powerful tool in our journey to improve the commercial climate in Bronzeville. We've been able to express and share our ideas, organize a group and proactively work toward the soliciting and attracting businesses in our community. We were able to mobilize our group in essentially three weeks time and I am not sure if many other formats, outside of Everyblock, could have duplicated or exceeded our progress to date," said Erica.

Today we're excited to launch the EveryBlock publisher program, a way for local news publishers to use EveryBlock to promote their stories, build their social media following and interact with people who read their articles via our site.

If you run a local news site in an EveryBlock city, you're probably familiar with "media mentions" on EveryBlock. Basically, we index all local media and blogs by location, so that EveryBlock users will get notified whenever their followed places are mentioned in the news. With this new publisher program, you can "claim" your site on EveryBlock and get access to a number of features that are designed to help you grow your site.

To claim your site, click on the name of your publication in any EveryBlock media mention and follow the steps to verify your account. Once you've verified it, you can do the following:

• Add links to your Facebook and Twitter accounts to help you grow your fans and followers. These links will show up next to your articles on EveryBlock, and if someone shares one of your articles from EveryBlock on Twitter, the tweet will include your Twitter handle.
• Upload a logo, which will appear on all of your media mentions to increase the visibility of your stories and build greater awareness for your publication.
• Auto-subscribe to all your media mentions on EveryBlock, which means you'll get an e-mail whenever somebody comments on one of your stories on EveryBlock -- so you can engage with neighbors who are interested in your stories.
• Manually tell us to refresh your feed so your latest news is posted sooner. Right now we check each media source for updates once an hour, but if you've just published some breaking news, this lets you tell us about it more quickly.

We're excited about this initial batch of features and we're planning to add more in the upcoming months, so stay tuned.

If you have any questions or feedback for us, please feel free to comment below or contact us via e-mail.

Also, if your publication isn't listed on EveryBlock and you write about neighborhood news, we invite you to let us know.

Today, we’re launching a new feature to help you manage which users you see on your EveryBlock homepage and in your email.

You’ve probably noticed that as EveryBlock has grown, we’ve attracted a wide range of neighbors with different opinions and interests. This has led to more neighbor messages and more comments on the site.

But, we also know there may be some neighbors who you would prefer not to receive messages from because their favorite neighborhood topic isn't of interest to you or you just don't want to see their comments in neighborhood discussions.

We now have a “mute" user button for these situations. Simply hover over any user’s comment or message on the site, and you’ll see an option to mute them (along with the ability to report their comment or hide the entire discussion from your timeline).

You will never see neighbor messages from muted users, and their comments on other discussions will be hidden from view. If you would like to read a comment from a muted user, you can expand it and read it without unmuting them.

Importantly, muting a user is anonymous. He or she won't know you've muted them, so you can mute safely without hurting people's feelings.

“Mute user” etiquette

When muting users, please help us by following a few simple rules.

First, please don’t announce you’re muting a neighbor in the discussion thread, as we'd consider that to be an off-topic comment that violates our community guidelines.

Second, please continue to report offensive comments by clicking on the “Report” button. We don’t want a few bad apples to ruin the conversation for everyone else. If users are violating our guidelines, please report their comments before you mute them.

To keep the positive community spirit going on EveryBlock, users who are repeatedly muted by their neighbors for what is clearly unneighborly behavior (personal attacks, antagonizing or offensive comments, off-topic rants, etc.) will have their accounts deactivated.

If you have any feedback for us about this new feature, please comment below or contact us directly. We hope this improvement helps make your EveryBlock a better place. See you online!

We're looking to hire a developer/sysadmin to join our small and effective development team at EveryBlock.

(Note that this job opening is in addition to our other one here, which is more of a developer role. This job is more sysadmin-focused, but large parts of the two job descriptions are similar.)

You'd be the sysadmin for EveryBlock, helping maintain and improve our infrastructure on Amazon EC2. But we're small enough that your time won't only be spent doing sysadmin work; you'll also have a hand in product development.

This is your chance to work on a wide variety of interesting problems, helping improve a great product with a passionate and growing user base. You should expect to have a hand in all aspects of the site, and your contributions will have an immediate, direct impact on the awesomeness of our service.

Here is the requisite bulleted list of requirements:

• Significant knowledge of Linux systems administration -- deployment, upkeep, maintenance, automation of tasks.
• Experience developing Web applications.
• Experience (and preference for) working on a small team.
• Clear communication skills, both verbal and written.
• Impeccable work ethic and ability to manage your own workload effectively.
• Ability to iterate quickly.
• Ability to write high-quality code, with a passion to the point where poorly written code makes you slightly nauseous.
• A passion for computer programming/hacking to the point where you'd be doing it even if you weren't getting paid for it.

And here are some nice-to-haves:

• Experience with Amazon EC2.
• Experience with Chef and/or Puppet.
• Experience with Python and Django.
• Experience maintaining and tuning PostgreSQL.
• Experience building geo apps and using PostGIS.
• Passion about improving neighborhoods through information and enabling community conversation.
• Sense of humor.

This is your chance to work directly with two Django committers, including one of the creators of the framework. We have three developers at the moment; you'd be the fourth. It's worth mentioning that the entire team right now is seven people, and you have a chance to make a huge impact, beyond strictly development -- suggesting marketing ideas, helping prioritize various strategies and tactics, etc.

We have a low-stress environment and a culture of getting things done with as little corporate BS as possible. Though we're technically no longer an independent startup -- we were acquired by msnbc.com in 2009 -- we're culturally very much still a startup, given that our product is still in early stages and we're still figuring things out. It's a very nice combination of startup culture with the financial security of working for a big company. (We have great benefits -- salary, health care, 401(k), bonuses, etc.) And msnbc.com is taking the long-view on us, investing in us over time and giving us years to develop a large audience and become profitable. It's a great company to work for.

Now is a fantastic time to be joining our team. We just hired a new President, we recently launched a major redesign that's been almost universally loved, and, most importantly, we're getting momentum and critical mass in more and more neighborhoods.

You'll need to live in the Chicago area for this position; telecommuters need not apply. Our office is in a comfortable loft space on the north side of Chicago, near a bunch of other startups. Several of us walk or bike to work; we're also equidistant from the Montrose and Irving Park el stations on the Brown Line, and several bus lines.

To apply, email your resume and cover letter to me at adrian at everyblock.com. Thanks for your interest!

We've added a new data source in each of our 16 cities, one that fits particularly well with our new motto of 'make your block a better place.'

In their own words, DonorsChoose.org is “on online charity that makes it easy for anyone to help students in need.” In short, it’s a service that lets you find public schools to donate to, at the level of specific teacher and project. We think we’re in a great position to help promote DonorsChoose projects, given our focus on neighborhood-level news and community improvement.

Starting now, you’ll see “Classroom fundraisers” in your EveryBlock homepage and e-mails. We’ll let you know whenever DonorsChoose.org has published a new project for a school in your followed places. (To ensure that you’ll see this, click on "manage news types" under your account tab and make sure “Classroom fundraisers” is checked.)

As always, we welcome your thoughts on this and all other site news at feedback@everyblock.com.

One of the most common ways people use EveryBlock is to find out what’s happening with businesses in the neighborhood.

So, when Chicago neighbor ladykills82 noticed a local business had been closed for several days, she posted a question on the site:

Does anyone know what happened to the little liquor store Windy City Liquors on the corner of Damen and Argyle? They've been closed for four days now with just a handwritten sign that says 'Sorry we are closed.' I just wonder because I go there a lot and am friendly with the family that owns the place, I hope nothing bad has happened.

Soon, residents learned the owners had been affected by several recent tragedies. “Maybe we can do a fundraiser for the family or something? I’m not really sure how to do something like that as I never had - but I would definitely help out in anyway,” suggested neighbor BDub.

Within minutes, BDub created a page on a the fundraising site GiveForward.com and neighbors began to submit their donations.

Less than a week after ladykill82’s first message, residents have raised more than $300 and additional funds continue to come in. “Wow, this is so awesome! I never thought posting a simple question would have such a great effect. Thank you guys for being such thoughtful neighbors,” she wrote.

We’ve just added a few new bells and whistles to EveryBlock to make it even easier for you to share helpful news with your neighbors.

We’re most excited to announce you can now upload photos to your neighbor messages (here's an example). So the next time you want to tell your neighbors about the film crew you saw on your way home from work, the new restaurant that just opened on the corner, or the vacant lot in need of some neighborly attention, remember to snap a picture to go along with your message.

Once you get down to the business of posting your neighbor message and photo, you’ll see we’ve also reduced the number of steps it takes to post a message to a place you don’t already follow. (Previously, the posting form only allowed you to post to your followed places, which, for example, made it tough to post to the nearby neighborhood you pass through on your way to the gym.) Just search for the place in the new search box and you’ll be on your way.

Finally, we’ve also added the ability for you to automatically post to Twitter and Facebook when you post a new message. Not only is it a great way to show your friends what an awesome neighbor you are (just in case they didn’t know already), but it’s an easy way to spread the word about EveryBlock to folks who you think might want to check us out.

We’re pretty excited about these new features and we can’t wait to see all the messages with photos you’ll be sharing to help make your block a better place. You can get to the new posting interface by clicking the "Post a new message" box on your personal EveryBlock homepage, or clicking "Start a discussion" at the top of any EveryBlock page.

Happy posting, and don’t forget to check out our new and improved EveryBlock community guidelines for some helpful dos and don’ts to keep in mind.

We're looking to hire another programmer to join our small and effective development team at EveryBlock. This is your chance to work on a wide variety of interesting problems, helping improve a great product with a passionate and growing user base. You should expect to have a hand in all aspects of the site, and your contributions will have an immediate, direct impact on the awesomeness of our service.

When it comes to developers, we like to hire Jacks (or Jills) of all trades. The ideal candidate will be equally comfortable developing back-end Python code, working with databases (we use PostgreSQL and PostGIS), writing efficient front-end JavaScript (we use jQuery), writing screen-scrapers and other various data-import scripts (we use Python), helping optimize our infrastructure, and working on EveryBlock mobile applications (iPhone, Android). There will be a focus on mobile applications, at least at the beginning, but your responsibilities will be wider and more varied than that over time.

Here is the requisite bulleted list of requirements:

• Significant experience using Python.
• Experience building mobile applications for iPhone and/or Android.
• Experience using Django to build Web applications.
• Experience developing non-trivial JavaScript applications.
• Experience deploying code on Linux.
• Experience (and preference for) working on a small team.
• Clear communication skills, both verbal and written.
• Impeccable work ethic and ability to manage your own workload effectively.
• Ability to iterate quickly.
• Ability to write high-quality code, with a passion to the point where poorly written code makes you slightly nauseous.
• A passion for computer programming/hacking to the point where you'd be doing it even if you weren't getting paid for it.

And here are some nice-to-haves:

• Experience building geo apps and using PostGIS.
• Experience writing screen-scrapers and working with data (cleaning it up, importing it).
• Passion about improving neighborhoods through information and enabling community conversation.
• Sense of humor.

This is your chance to work directly with two Django committers, including one of the creators of the framework (hey, that's me!). We have three developers at the moment; you'd be the fourth. It's worth mentioning that the entire team right now is seven people, and you have a chance to make a huge impact, beyond strictly development -- suggesting marketing ideas, helping prioritize various strategies and tactics, etc.

We have a low-stress environment and a culture of getting things done with as little corporate BS as possible. Though we're technically no longer an independent startup -- we were acquired by msnbc.com in 2009 -- we're culturally very much still a startup, given that our product is still in early stages and we're still figuring things out. It's a very nice combination of startup culture with the financial security of working for a big company. (We have great benefits -- salary, health care, 401(k), bonuses, etc.) And msnbc.com is taking the long-view on us, investing in us over time and giving us years to develop a large audience and become profitable. It's a great company to work for.

Now is a fantastic time to be joining our team. We just hired a new President, we recently launched a major redesign that's been almost universally loved, and, most importantly, we're getting momentum and critical mass in more and more neighborhoods.

You'll need to live in the Chicago area for this position; telecommuters need not apply. Our office is in a comfortable loft space on the north side of Chicago, near a bunch of other startups. Several of us walk or bike to work; we're also equidistant from the Montrose and Irving Park el stations on the Brown Line, and several bus lines.

Apply through the official msnbc.com Jobvite site here. Thanks for checking this out.

Four months ago, we launched the redesign of EveryBlock complete with a bunch of new features to encourage people to start connecting and sharing with their neighbors.

The combination of the redesign, increased marketing efforts and good old neighborly conversation has led to a significant spike in activity on EveryBlock, particularly in our largest market and hometown, Chicago. Now, we’re ready to build on our success and grow the EveryBlock community even more.

We’re currently looking for a community coordinator in New York City who can help build and manage the EveryBlock community in their area. The coordinator’s main focus will be New York, but they’ll be responsible for moderating conversations in several additional East Coast cities as well.

For now, this is a temporary job with a six-month timeframe, but it does have the possibility for extension. In addition, we expect it to take about 25 hours per week to start, but as the community grows, so will the time commitment.

So what does our ideal candidate look like? We’re looking for someone who already has an active social media presence and understands how to engage with people in an online environment while also building an audience. As with any community manager role, excellent judgment and strong writing skills are critical. And finally, this person has to be both knowledgeable and passionate about New York City.

We’re really excited about this first step toward building out our community management team. For more information or to submit your resume, check out the official job posting.