CoverItLive Picks Up $1 Million Round For Liveblogging Tech
This story was written by Tameka Kee.
Liveblogging service CoverItLive (CiL) has secured $1 million (about $1.2 million Canadian dollars) in a first round of funding. Seed investor Flagstone Capital participated in the round, along with private investor Paul Kedrosky. The Toronto-based startup's platform lets users post and update content, insert video and images, and set up polls and Q&A sessions in real time. There's mobile support, including an iPhone viewer; CiL also archives each liveblogging session and provides analytics.
The service is currently freeand some features will remain freebut a "Pricing" section on the site details CiL's possible revenue streams: an Enterprise product for large news organizations, which TechCrunch reports will cost between $50 and $500 per month; a white-label model that will license the software to other companies; and of course, an ad-supported version.
President Keith McSpurren also sees the merits of CiL in an educational setting: "We see the software being used more and more in classrooms from grade 4 all the way up to graduate studies ... If putting Macs in schools worked for *Apple*, offering CiL Enterprise for free to schools should work for us," he said, in an email detailing the funding to registered users.
By Tameka Kee