The world of mobile video services is starting to heat up now that YouTube co-founders have released MixBit, which they expect to take on already popular services such as Vine and Instagram. Things are going to only get more interesting as there’s a new contender in the ring of mobile video services as NBC News has announced they have acquired Stringwire.
NBC News’ acquisition of Stringwire means the network will be betting on its users to gain access to news footage straight from the source who happen to be at the scene of some major news event occurring. The acquisition also means NBC News can obtain footage from the scene of an event before news crews can arrive to officially cover it.
Stringwire was developed by Phil Groman, who is a New York University undergraduate, as a way for its users to share real-time video from their smartphones. In order to help spread the word about the application, NBC will send messages to users via Twitter if they happen to be at the scene of a news story, which they’ll be invited to download Stringwire in order to have the footage streamed back to the company’s New York newsroom. Once uploaded, editors would then decide whether to use the footage for later or to go live with the feed.