SXSW
50 Cent and Hang w/ to lead SXSW Interactive transition into SXSW Music
By Adam Flomenbaum on March 11, 2014 1:22 PM
50centTonight will mark the end of South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive and the start of SXSW Music. Helping to make the transition will be 50 Cent, who will headline an exclusive concert at 1100 Warehouse at 8pm.
The concert will be broadcast exclusively via ‘Hang w/,’ an app that allows people to hang out with each other via live video and chat. Unlike Instagram and Vine, there is no need to take the extra step to publish videos; instead, a user simply presses record and followers are notified that the user is currently streaming content.
“This is going to be a pivotal event in Hang w/ history,” said Andrew Maltin, co-founder and CEO of Hang With, Inc. “Hang w/ has shown itself to be a powerful technology platform for musicians to engage their fans, and we are thrilled at the opportunity to showcase our platform in front of the who’s who of music and tech, courtesy of 50 Cent who himself lives at the intersection of music and tech.”
50 Cent is an investor in Hang With, Inc., and at the peak of his fame was known to throw his weight behind promoting his entrepreneurial pursuits.
Hang w/ reached a million downloads only nine months after its launch, and the company recently released metrics that show that fans are more likely to interact with a celebrity’s Hang w/ broadcast than they are with a celebrity’s Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram accounts. “This was the original reason we built the app,” Maltin said in an interview with Billboard, “so celebrities can monetize their social media outreach and activities.”
While Hang w/ certainly has good potential to help celebrities monetize their social output, one could imagine more altruistic use cases. For example, a live-feed platform would be an invaluable resource to journalists in the field and citizen reporters during uprisings. If news stations could tap into these feeds, it would help linear broadcasts stay as up-to-date as Twitter, reduce costs, and increase exposure.
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