NewsiT LLC

NewsiT’s mobile and social platform verifies original crowd-sourced content in real time to help media, campaigns and brands attract targeted and committed consumers.

End-users get more relevant and accurate real time information – and valuable conversations with other users. People connect around interests they have in common to create, verify and share original content. NewsiT’s mobile, tablet and web crowd-sourcing apps enable anyone to report and share key story elements in text, video and photos. NewsiT algorithms, rating and reputation scoring systems and fact-checkers interact with smart NewsiT communities to guarantee veracity, quality, relevance and influence.

NewsiT drives early and recurring revenue by licensing its technology, processes and crowd-sourcing software to media, campaigns and brands to help them retain and attract highly-targeted and committed consumers. A ‘plug & play’ mobile SDK and web API provides NewsiT partners with a crowd-reporting user interface customizable by topic, location, and style – powered by sophisticated algorithms and processes to vet, validate and reward both original contributions and raw content mined from Twitter, YouTube and other sources. Partners bring their existing users into NewsiT communities, while attracting new users via the NewsiT platform. NewsiT scales by enabling self-propelling communities worldwide, monetized by targeted contextual advertising and sponsorship.

Who wins? Consumers - and the brands, businesses, media, affinity groups and others that want to reach them 24/7.

NewsiT is a distributed solution that scales across multiple verticals worldwide with two primary sources of revenue: 

— Step 1 - Platform Licensing Fees: Media, brands, affinity groups, agencies and businesses license our technology (algorithms, business processes, consumer-facing mobile/tablet/web APIs and analytics) to get quality content, reduce costs, grow, retain and reward users, and open new revenue streams as consumers move mobile.

— Step 2 – Sponsorship & Advertising: Partners bring their own pre-existing online networks and marketing to help NewsiT scale self-propelling communities aggregated by shared interest, creating a an efficient and effective market for sponsors and advertisers to target specific users cross-platform around valuable verticals.

NewsiT has the right team to deliver on a strong plan: CEO and founder Melinda Wittstock is a proven entrepreneur, results driver, social media expert and award-winning journalist. From the Times of London, BBC, CNBC to Capitol News Connection and NewsiT, she's driven traffic, revenue and ratings, built teams and businesses, sold licensing deals and advertising, and sweated many a payroll. Her team includes talented engineers across iOS, Ruby and Big Data, including CTO Craig Zingerline,and proven revenue drivers like Matt Prohaska, former SVP of Digital Advertising at AOL, who has sold or managed teams selling $2.5BN of advertising in 12 years. Advisers include Duncan Work, former Chief Scientist of LinkedIn, and Kevin Survance, former CTO of MapQuest.

NewsiT is on track to close licensing deals Q1 2013 worth $100,000 in the quarter – with a substantial pipeline of committed media, affinity and other customers.

Market trends heavily favor NewsiT prospects as social becomes ‘interest’ and ‘trust’ focused, and a $100BN annual US news advertising spend (and other vertical ad budgets addressed by NewsiT’s focus on consumer, health, small business, politics, environment, etc)– moves online/mobile. Mobile represents a $20BN+ opportunity in the US (KPCB). More than 107m Americans have smart-phones and 55m+ own tablets, with 25% getting news via mobile.

Consumers are migrating away from traditional media and creating their own content and relationships focused on what interests them. But much of this content is unreliable, irrelevant and repetitive and media, brands, and affinity groups lack efficient means to verify user-generated content made ubiquitous by social networks.  Media groups are unable to sustain quality or respond quickly to the mobile migration of consumers given cost pressures. NewsiT provides an ‘end-to-end’ integrated solution that enables partners to grow/retain users, cut costs and boost revenue.

No other company has found an automated and scalable way to create and validate user-generated content of trust and personal relevance in real time at low cost. NewsiT is differentiated from other user-generated sites (NowPublic, AllVoices, Newsvine, CNN iReport, Reddit), social curating platforms (Flipboard, Instapaper, Storify, Flud), aggregators (Feedly, Prismatic, Google News, Pulse) and destination sites, by being first to:

— Deploy pattern recognition, predictive, natural language and other algorithms to real-time validation of raw content and source reputation

— Incentivize and reward user posts via reputation scoring, rating, game layer & recognition

— Create network effects around content creation and systems for trusted reciprocal conversation

— Cut through ‘information overload’ to unearth nuggets of valuable information ‘gold’

NewsiT is raising $3mm in Series A. Proceeds will be used primarily for Go to Market Execution (hiring and support for key sales/BD, engagement and revenue generating personnel) and Platform Enhancement (‘Next Gen’ Algorithms & Processes, iPad and Android SDK, ongoing UX improvements and implementation of 'reputation scoring' systems).

NewsiT is led by a team of serial entrepreneurs and executives with proven expertise across social & legacy media, tech, ad sales & marketing – driving traffic, revenue and high margins, creating award-winning news content and cutting edge technology.

CEO & Founder Melinda Wittstock is an entrepreneur, proven executive and social media expert, and award-winning journalist (London Times, Financial Times, CNBC, BBC News, ABC, NPR). She founded and ran the award-winning Capitol News Connection, serving 200 radio stations with award-winning custom content and creating the interactive www.askyourlawmaker.com. She has driven traffic and ratings (10m viewers watched the nightly newsmagazine USA Direct she created for the BBC), sold advertising and sponsorship and created efficient new models for quality news production and distribution.

NewsiT's tech team is lead by acting CTO Kevin Survance, the former CTO of MapQuest and CEO of Eleos Technologies, and includes big data specialists, iOS and Ruby programmers including Tim Berglund, an acclaimed data architect whose work spans MapQuest, IntelliData and M33 among others, and Michael Harper, an iOS, Android and Ruby on Rails specialist who has worked for Apple, Sun Microsystems, Symantec and many others and built award-winning mobile apps.

Matt Prohaska is head of Sales and Business Development. Matt is the former SVP of Digital Advertising at AOL. In the past 12 years he has sold or managed teams selling $2.5 bn in advertising revenue. Head of editorial is Bruce Potter, an award-winning journalist and former executive of Media General and publisher of its newspapers. 

There are two primary sources of revenue: 

— Platform Licensing: We solve a major problem for media, brands and businesses. They license our technology – algorithms, innovative business processes, consumer-facing mobile/tablet/web SDK and analytics – to get quality content, reduce costs, grow and retain users and open new revenue streams as consumers move mobile.

— Sponsorship: Partners harness existing users to help build NewsiT ‘communities of interest’ for sponsors and brands to target cross-platform across valuable verticals around reliable quality content.

No meaningful company has found an automated and scalable way to apply big data analytics, crowd-sourcing software and a social game layer to validate raw user-generated content in real time to create original, quality news of personal relevance at low cost.

NewsiT is differentiated from other user-generated sites (NowPublic, AllVoices, Newsvine, RawPower, CNN iReport and others), social curating platforms (Flipboard, Instapaper, Storify, Flud), aggregators (Feedly, Google News, Pulse, Trove, News 360 and many others) and destination sites, by being the first to:

— Deploy big data analytics, pattern recognition and other algorithms to real-time editing/QA across social media and its own platform

— Incentivize and reward user contribution via reputation scoring & game layer

— Cut through the social information overload to identify the valuable nuggets of actionable, relevant information

- Create powerful network effects around content creation and collaboration, as well as a powerful automated user acquisition tool.