Newsvine Purchased By MSNBC: A Win-Win Situation?

Newsvine, a social news site that puts heavier emphasis on content than community (setting it apart from Digg) and is far less technology-oriented than the biggest star in the market (again, Digg) has been purchased by MSNBC.

The social website’s new parent is likely to incorporate into its own operations some of the facets that have made Newsvine a successful enterprise. Being that it is as much an aggregator of news as a venue for discussion around topics and stories of the day, and does a superb job at performing those very functions, it doesn’t take much to see MSNBC’s plans for what they are. Adding Newsvine’s best components to MSNBC’s Internet operations will allow the company to better make the transition to a more Web 2.0-friendly business model, a model surely worth pursuing in an increasingly networked world.

When compared with MSNBC, Newsvine appears to have a rather small footprint. While the social news website clocks in an average of one million monthly visitors, MSNBC literally dwarfs the much younger operation (MSNBC has had a presence online since 1996) with an average monthly traffic ranking of about 29 million. While the appearance of such a drastic gap might lead one to presume the two entities a mismatch, the newly announced arrangement made between both companies does allow both to reap considerable gains.

Newsvine, for one, will now find itself living under the auspices of much greater Web entity. This new arrangement essentially affords the creators of the site the opportunity to witness their unique formula (way to wax poetic about computer code, huh?) chart exponential growth from this moment forward. That’s certain to put at least a few more gold stars on their resumes and reputations, whether they opt to stick with the company under new ownership or not.

And MSNBC, as the new proprietor of the social site, gets to have as its own a well-developed, well-polished piece of kit, one whose elegance greatly exceeds its own at present, and one – with proper integration – which could in fact lead MSNBC to document yet more growth in seasons ahead. Nothing, after all, attracts more people to a particular item than a pretty face and well-rounded core structure. Mating MSNBC’s huge numbers with Newsvine’s interface could propel both parent and proprietee to new and quite notable heights.

That is, if those at MSNBC do things right in the weeks and months to come. Great opportunities such as this have gone unexploited before.