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MSNBC.com, the online arm of the cable news station MSNBC, has just acquired Newsvine. With this acquisition MSNBC is getting into the social news business. According to Newsvine’s blog, Newsvine will continue to operate independently of MSNBC.com. However, MSNBC.com and Newsvine are going to try to incorporate each other’s content where it makes sense. Newsvine has stated that the reason for the acquisition is,

Although going from zero to over a million users a month in less than two years is heartening, msnbc.com operates on another scale entirely. While Newsvine may be well known in early adopter circles, we want every college student, every farmer, every weekend journalist, and every household to have their own branch on the ‘Vine. In order to spread this idea further, we could have gone out and raised a lot of money, quadrupled our staff, and gone it alone, but when one of the finest news organizations in the world is headquartered right across Lake Washington, the potential of partnering with such a great team is dramatic.

This is a very interesting development. Mainstream media is starting to gobble up social media sites. While this is just one acquisition, I believe that we will see more mainstream (or old-stream) media sites move to more social distribution. However, it will be interesting whether Internet user will embrace these ventures.