Watchup

Watchup was a streaming news service that provided a personalized video newscast by aggregating content from various news channels into a single application.

The company was founded in 2012 by Adriano Farano, a former journalist and Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. Farano's background in journalism, including co-founding the pan-European online magazine CafeBabel.com, informed his mission to reinvent the newscast for the mobile era. The idea was researched during his fellowship at Stanford, where he focused on augmenting the news experience on mobile and tablet devices. Watchup was subsequently incubated at StartX, the Stanford startup accelerator.

The service allowed users to create customized newscasts from a library of over 160 local, national, and international news partners, including major outlets like CNN, CBS News, and Fox News. The app was designed for on-the-go users and was available on platforms such as iPhone, iPad, Android devices, and was the first news streaming app on the Nintendo Wii U. The business model was centered on providing the app for free to users, aiming to solve the challenge of fragmented news video consumption online by creating a single, cohesive viewing experience. The platform gained recognition, being named one of the Best Apps of 2014 by Google and winning a Webby Award.

In a multi-million dollar deal in 2016, Watchup was acquired by Plex, a personal media server company. Following the acquisition, Farano served as Head of Content at Plex, and the Watchup technology was integrated to enhance Plex's own personalized video news offerings.

Keywords: video news aggregator, streaming news service, personalized newscast, mobile news app, digital journalism, Stanford startup, StartX accelerator, Adriano Farano, Plex acquisition, news on-demand, video journalism, custom newscast, news streaming app