The Activ8Social team nearly didn’t survive Washington DC’s 101 ºF (38 ºC) weekend but luckily we caught some cool waves at the National Harbour waterfront. We hope you fared better than us. This week’s Social Mashup is sure to help you ring in the new week with stories on mobile application Hitpost, ESPN’s new Twitter reporting philosophy, Airbnb’s $1 billion valuation, and Apple’s potential acquisition of Hulu. Oh and apparently we get to watch Super Bowl XLVI next year according to @AdamSchefter!
Sports Reporting App
Ever wonder what it would be like to be a sports reporter? Well, now here’s your chance. The Hitpost app for iPhone and Android lets you be a sports reporter for your favorite team with the latest news, scores, tweets, updates and photos from the organization. You can create your own sports report by choosing one of Hitposts photos or snapping one of your own, adding your personal commentary, geo-tag the post and sharing it through Hitpost, Facebook, Twitter, text or email. The app which was released earlier this year, came out with a new version last week that will let you cover football reporting abroad with the English Premier League’s addition to the sports lineup.
In addition to writing your own reports, Hitpost is a great app to get the news you want about the teams you care about aggregated on one page in a visually aesthetic way, perfect for mobile platforms. The new features also keep you up-to-date with the ability to see what other fans are writing about your team.
Hitpost’s motto hasn’t changed since day one: “crowd-sourced sports coverage.” This motto and mission to bring sports reporting to fans’ fingertips may help propel the app forward. Last week, it saw 100 “hits” or comments posted per minute through the app. Currently, the app averages around 3,000 users per day.
ESPN Ramps Up Twitter Reporting
The world wide leader in sports, ESPN, is catching on to the Twitter reporting craze with plans to increase usage both on and off the air. ESPN has used Twitter in the past to report breaking news by following athletes and to promote stories on its website. With its newest tactic, ESPN looks to reach fans watching the shows and following along on their Twitter feeds. ESPN plans to include more activity during live events and tweets from rival station sportscasters.
This comes partly as a reaction to Yahoo Sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski beating ESPN to the punch with reports during the NBA draft. Despite covering the draft live, Wojnarowski scooped ESPN by several minutes on several draft picks. To prevent losing out on breaking stories to other members of the media, ESPN is aggregating a feed that will include 40 other top Twitter feeds publicly on its site.
Currently, Turner Sports has a team experimenting with this idea, manually choosing the best tweets and adding them into the aggregated feed. The network has more Twitter tools coming out this year and will be adding aggregated feeds to different sections of the website. We’re looking forward to what ESPN comes out with, especially during the coverage of major sporting events and other live draft events.
Airbnb Raises $112 Million
Underground travel site, Airbnb, has raised $112 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global and General Catalyst in an effort to boost international growth. If you haven’t heard of them yet, Airbnb is a marketplace for space essentially. People can post any space for rent from their couch to a tent in the backyard to a country. They describe themselves as an eBay for ‘space,’ but there is no bidding and you obviously don’t get to keep the space you buy. The site is becoming increasingly popular amongst travelers on a large scale and is beginning to disrupt the hotel industry. The huge investment puts the company’s worth at just north of $1 billion, in part thanks to a significant contribution from one Ashton Kutcher.
The money is clearly meant to grow Airbnb further rather than start to cash out existing investors which is something that giants like Facebook and have done with huge rounds of funding. Many expect this money to be used for international acquisitions, primarily due to stiff competition internationally from sites like Wimdu who Airbnb has publicly called “impostors.”
“Today is a watershed moment – both for Airbnb as a company and for our community — that will enable us to touch new markets and expand our vision to make the world’s most interesting and inspiring places accessible to our users,” co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said in a released statement.
Andreessen Horowitz was the leader in the investment with $60 million and their portfolio includes Foursquare, Facebook, Groupon, Instagram, Twitter, Zynga and Skype, impressive to say the least.
“And while [Airbnb] has accomplished a ton in just a couple of years, we believe that they’re just scratching the surface of theirpotential. They have opportunities to go much deeper in their current categories, broaden into new categories of spaces, and build out their global footprint. They are truly pioneering a new marketplace, where access to spaces is more valuable than ownership.” Andreessen Horowitz partner Jeff Jordan said about the acquisition.
Apple to Buy Hulu?
With $76.2 billion in cash and securities, Apple is reportedly set to make a bid for Hulu. If you don’t know what Hulu is by now you are more than likely living under a rock, but Hulu is an extremely popular video streaming service. Other companies like Google and Yahoo have also reportedly been looking at Hulu but as the second wealthiest company in the world, Apple should have the edge on anybody if it gets sold.
Not to be overlooked, it’s important to note that if Apple, or any other company, were to acquire Hulu there’s no guarantee it would be able to continue streaming content from the company’s current owners. A buyer may have to reach a new deal in order to license the content from networks like Fox, ABC and NBC. Hulu’s price is expected to be in the $2 billion range for anybody who wants to purchase it. Hulu, which is owned by Disney, News Corp., Comcast Corp. and Providence Equity Partners, started presenting its financial information to interested bidders late last month, after an unsolicited offer prompted its board to look for other offers.
For Apple, an acquisition of Hulu could bolster its iTunes store, which provides videos users can rent or buy, but does not currently stream content or offer a subscription streaming service. It would also be a chance for Apple to begin competing directly with video streaming giant Netflix. We think the odds are that Hulu will not be sold in the near future, but if Apple were to in fact purchase the video streaming site, it could seriously pay major dividends for them.
