TNW has a long relationship with Livefyre, one of the premier commenting services online, as one of the company’s first partners. That in mind, if you have been a TNW reader for any length of time, you’ve used or otherwise interacted with its service. Just scroll down, it’s what we have live on the site.
Today the company formally announced a new product line, StreamHub, something that it intends to both help the Internet become more social, and assist brands and publications make their sites interactive and ‘alive’ in new ways.
StreamHub Core
At the highest level, Livefyre calls StreamHub social infrastructure for websites that support brands and publications. It’s a good description of the product.
StreamHub Core is one half of the software, and is its more vanilla component. Through Core, websites can quickly ‘snap on’ a number of applications to their current layout. Think of things like comments, live blogs, live chats, video via a widget, and so forth.
The idea here is that with a single line of code, and in any CMS, and you can add social capability that goes far beyond what Livefyre’s traditional commenting system allowed.
StreamHub Curate
Curate is where Livefyre’s new product takes off. Essentially, the company is aggregating social data from around the Internet into a single location. This allows brands and websites to quickly tap into the flow, carefully. Want all pictures uploaded from a single location? That sort of thing, using tweets, images, and video, sorted across several vectors.
This functionality fits into what Core offers. For example, you can stream those live pictures into your live blog. The idea, according to its own copy, is to take the content that it finds, and allow “for your readers to comment on and interact with.” Reason? Well, by bringing all the content and interaction into your site, readers and users don’t need to leave.
Without delving too deeply into the technical side of things, through StreamHub’s APIs and other customization points, if it’s a social product that you can imagine, you can probably build it using what Livefyre has put together.
Response
According to the Livefyre team, its partners are more than happy with what it has put together in StreamHub. The platform was released to several of its largest partners some 6 weeks ago. They quickly set to work integrating it into a TV product, an iPad app, and other work.
The response, TNW was told, has been “overwhelmingly positive.”
Funding
Calling its first equity round of $800,000 a Series A, the company is currently raising a third round. While it declined to inform TNW as to its size, we were told that it would be its largest yet. The firm’s Series B was $4.5 million, for reference.
The company claims 60 enterprise customers. Some of its commercial deals are over the $1 million yearly mark. The company claims to have the 12th largest site network online.
In sum, StreamHub is likely coming to a site that you use, if you recognize it or not. When the company locks down its Series C, we’ll bring you the news.
Top Image Credit: Ben Watts
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