Many startups arise when someone notices a lot of people doing the same thing in a disorganized or sort of convoluted way. One example is how Foodspotting came about because so many people were using services like Twitter to share pictures of what food they were eating. In a similar vein, Aaron Krane noticed that a lot of people were sharing pictures of their favorite sports moments as they watch them on TV. And now we have Hitpost.
Or we will soon. Hitpost is set to launch later this month as an app for both iPhones and Android phones. With it, you can easily take pictures of the sports game you’re watching and share them with friends. “Simply put, we create a live social community of sports fans who edit the content instead of ESPN,” says Krane.
Krane brings with him some experience to the table as Hitpost is really a combination of two things he’s learned. First, he’s bringing what he’s learned from the social perspective from his time at Slide, where he worked on the Top Friends application, which was at the time the most popular app on Facebook. And he’s bringing what he’s learned over the past year working on Snapshot, a HTML5-based web application for viewing sports images built alongside Sports Illustrated.
Snapshot was the first product that Hitpost got out the door when it launched a month ago alongside the Chrome Web Store roll out. And they’re going to continue to work on it and support it, but Krane felt the timing was right for them to expand into the mobile space and bring what they’ve learned.
“This is our pretty unfettered vision,” Krane notes. He says that sports addicts often pull out their phones every 30 minutes or so when they’re on the go to check up on scores and try to catch highlights of the games they care about. With Hitpost, that content will be delivered right to them in a visual way. This content can be delivered either by what team you’re interested in, what your friends are showing, or based on your location.
And users will be able to add their own commentary to the pictures along the top. This can actually make the images pretty funny. Below the pictures, conversations are had about the games.
But again, why TV images? Why not images from people actually at those games? “This is for what people actually do. People take photos of their TVs. Users are asking for an easier way to do it,” Krane says noting that pictures taken from high up in the stands from camera phones are no good anyway at capturing in-game action.
And Hitpost has some money to make all of this happen. While they’re already making some revenue from Snapshot, the team also raised an angel round of funding last year from a number of high-profile angels including Keith Rabois, Shervin Pishevar, and Naval Ravikant. Khosla Ventures and RRE Ventures also contributed to the round which came in a little over $500,000, Krane says.
Hitpost currently has 8 employees (and 1 volunteer) and they’re based out of an office in the SoMa area of San Francisco. Look for their app to hit later this month.
I’ve often wondered if the early Web pioneers had it all to do over again if Web companies would have put less of an emphasis on free.
People have been conditioned against paying for services or content on the Web, and the Web elite only have each other to blame. For all the talk of Web companies getting users first and “figuring out” how to make money later, the only two jaw-droppingly, multi-billion-dollar, innovative new ways to advertise online have been Google’s paid search ads and Groupon’s solution to unlocking local ad dollars on a mass scale. Those who win big–like Google– just perpetuate the cult of free content and services as a way of spoiling would be competitors. Witness a big disconnect between popularity and money. Exhibit A: Yahoo.
As a result, Netflix and Match.com are two of the only companies to have figured out ways to build large, lucrative subscription businesses online. Meanwhile, LinkedIn is one of the only Web 2.0 companies that has created a huge business with a freemium business model.
But on the mobile Web it’s a do-over, and it’s a totally different playbook from FREE! People are conditioned to pay for stuff over phones in a way they aren’t online, and they’re not flinching. According to Citibank’s US Internet Stock 2011 Playbook released today, Apple will generated as much as $2 billion in gross app revenue in 2011. For perspective, that’s about the same size as Citibank’s estimate for the entire online video advertising market next year, nevermind way more people watch YouTube than have an iPhone and it’s been in the cultural zeitgeist longer.
The report also cites Gartner’s estimates that the total app market was around $4 billion in 2010 and should grow to a whopping $27 billion by 2013. The biggest driver is smart phone penetration, the impact of which Citibank compares to the spread of broadband on the computer-based Internet in the early 2000s. Globally, smart phone unit sales grew 53% in 2010, and Citibank expects it to grow 29% in 2011 and stay in the mid-20% growth range through 2013.
Several years ago, it was controversial to say that a fledgling product called Android — not the hyped up purchase of YouTube– would be Google’s best bet at another hit on the scale of paid search. Android is already making $1 billion in revenues with an indirect monetization strategy, and Citibank expects that could double next year– not only eclipsing YouTube but the entire online video category. Now calling Android Google’s future is almost a cliche. Good thing Google hedged its bets.
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