14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook bought SportStream, a startup from San Francisco that analyzes mentions of sports on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The data coming from the agency’s research is sold to media sites or sports teams to use on their websites or to get information about what people are discussing.
There’s no word about how much Facebook paid for the startup, but that’s not unusual. The company has, however, received some financial backing from a capital venture firm backed by Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen’s Vulture Capital.
It’s unclear how Facebook plans to use the technology that comes with the purchase, save for the fact that it will be able to better connect to the platform’s sports-enthusiast users.
“Facebook sees the value in our technologies and team, and we’re excited to be a part of their continued investment in their platform. With this next step for SportStream, we’ll have greater resources to continue to do what we do best. We expect to make an impact on the more than 1 billion people who use Facebook as well as the many valued sports media businesses and professionals, teams, leagues and players that use Facebook to better connect with fans,” SportStream’s announcement reads.
It also mentions that Facebook will continue delivering great experiences with their existing partners. “And we’ll be scaling and further developing tools and resources to help many, many more partners going forward,” it writes in the announcement.
SportStream says that for the past 18 months, it has worked to help fans better connect with the best moments in sports, making it its mission to deliver the best social content, stats, news and information about games, teams and players.
Recently, reports have indicated that Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion (€2.18 billion), but nothing came of the deal after the company rejected the offer, despite the fact that the sum was three times larger than what Instagram got.