New York is spreadin’ the news about its burgeoning tech scene.
Earlier today, IBM, Gust, and the city of New York announced the launch of Digital.nyc, a single destination for anything you’d want to learn about technology and entrepreneurship in the Big Apple.
It’s the first site from the city to be based on the new “.nyc”domain registry. These local domains are opening up new real estate online and providing new revenue for city coffers, a boon for everyone.
“This is the first comprehensive, unified platform for an entire digital ecosystem,” says Gust founder and angel investor extraordinaire, David S. Rose. “Every single startup, investor, blog, news story, tweet. Every single thing. All pulled together from a dozen or more independent sources, normalized and cross-correlated.”
For the city, and for Rose, the site is about access. Companies looking for funding, investors looking for startups, candidates looking for jobs or job training can come to the digital.nyc site to get the information they need, says Rose.
The site is running on IBM’s Bluemix development platform and is the latest attempt from big blue to bearhug the Big Apple. From its involvement with the U.S. Open, to its swank offices for Watson (just down the street from our own headquarters in AOL’s basement), IBM seems to be on a mission to make New York the home away from its Armonk, NY actual home.
IBM actually provided the financing for the digital.nyc site, which was over two years in the making, Rose says. “The goal here is diversity,” says Rose. “The tech world in New York is not just three twenty-year-old dropouts in SoHo.” Rather, through this unique public-private partnership anyone can get an entry into the tech world that’s on offer from the city that once billed itself as the Millennium Capital of the world.