Penn Relays New Social Media Messaging App By WeHUB
Hagen Lee, former high school long distance runner for Lawrenceville School in New Jersey is now the Founder and CEO of WeHUB, a free unified messaging app that for the first time aids the Penn Relay communications and official messages for sponsors, event organizers, athletes and fans at the 121-year-old event. The prestigious track and field meet will be held April 23-25 at the University of Pennsylvania at Franklin Field in front of 110,000 fans. The Sports Techie community blog spoke this week with Lee after they successfully beta tested WeHUB Messenger in Panama Beach, Florida during college springbreak. The Sports Techie community blog appreciates the opportunity to learn about their tech that is crossing over to sport verticals for the first time because WeHUB has high hopes of partnering with the World Cup, Olympics and Georgia Football. This is the ultimate group communication and local community app.
WeHUB
Lee graduated from The Wharton School at Penn in 2014 after working at LG Electronics and Samsung. He created the social messaging idea after being tired of using 6 to 12 different communications apps to accomplish what WeHUB does by itself powered by 12 patent pending features. If 10 people tried to join an instant group and communicate with smartphones Lee figured it takes 90 transactions to input everyone’s name and numbers. Hundreds of strangers would require thousands of digital transactions. His proprietary software does all that on its own with the single push of a button.
WeHUB Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app Penn Relay season ticket holders, coaches and athletes can use to find out real-time results, search for news about the daily schedule or different athletes, analyze key event summaries, promote teams, brands and groups, and have a live connection with other app users on Wi-Fi or cellular networks at the Franklin Field and within a hundred mile maximum GPS enabled radius.
“As the first and oldest of relay meets, The Penn Relays has always tried to stay at the forefront of advances and our new alliance with WeHUB reflects this mission,” said Dave Johnson, the Frank Dolson Director of The Penn Relays. “This year, we anticipate attendance at The Penn Relays to top 110,000. WeHUB will help us stay connected with everyone at Franklin Field and the surrounding Carnival Village in real time.”
Chat groups can automatically communicate with followers, teams and vendors with pictures, text and video. Group leaders can post this on their profile or group page. This fun app allows for athletes to experience direct communications with each other and fans, media and trainers. Organizers can push announcements and engage fans in real-time particularly people not seating near a speaker. Lee said, “AT&T, Nike and Yale track and the field club can use WeHUB as a community builder.”
The “Whisper” feature allows a user to chat with a single group member within a screen as a private message. The “Instant Look” and “Look Around” features allows for robust search options to see which group, athlete, merchandise or university is nearby.
Core Communications Messaging Features
- “Recall”: If a wrong message is sent like a classic drunk text, simply recall it. WeHUB is the first in the US to launch this feature. Take back messages two minutes from now or 6 months later
- “Self-Destruction”: Poof and delete private social security numbers, date of birth and addresses.
Operation is simple, first open Instant GroupTM and then drag the icon into the lead or join position. The other 9 to 99 group members use the join icon and instantaneous communication is enabled without the need to create an account or enter data. Create a Villanova, Penn or Dartmouth group with 50 runners and find out how easy it is to lead a conversation.
“We are excited to be able to add a new mobile and social component during the century-old Penn Relays,” said Lee. “With WeHUB, teams will be able to create groups instantly and attendees will keep up with all the action as it happens, easily building a new community of friends to share the experience.”
About WeHUB
WeHub is a new, free open communication application with patent pending features that allows people to discover others nearby and instantaneously create any size group with a finger stroke, without having to create accounts or enter data. Combining all the best features needed in a messaging app, WeHub includes a discovery function to connect people in real time based on location and interests, message recall, self-destructing messages, message encryption, private messaging within a group chat, automatic deletion of chat histories that are inactive for seven days, and more. WeHub is a cross-platform mobile messaging app and can be downloaded through iTunes or Google Play. For more information, go to www.wehubmessenger.com or follow on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Sports Techie, WeHUB launched in Philadelphia to a small and avid fan page with a beta test. The company initially interviewed 500 people that offered valuable feedback about the initial feature set. Some three years later, the startup has grown to employ 20 employees, mostly engineers, has more than 30,000 users in 13 states and is offered in multiple languages such as Spanish, French and German. It rates as a 5.0 star on iTunes and about 4.7 on Google Play. A benchmark will be when they have 1 million users; at that time the plan is to raise a Series A round of funding from venture capital firms.
I wanted to know how they plan to monetize the software product. Lee says for now it is free for users and free of ads. They are looking at third party transactions down the road. If for example, NIKE Running or Learfield wanted a group with custom design features, WeHUB would ask for a cut of profits to develop and scale such projects. Sports marketing property owners like IMG can consider complimenting their physical assets, events and naming rights with the WeHUB app. Few schools, events sponsors have a mobile presence, real-time information source and social communication app like WeHUB.
Down the road, key sponsors, athletes and stakeholders will have access to even more new features as yet unreleased.
Whether you are high school track runner, Princeton relay group member or Nike tent volunteer, join and follow all the Penn Relay groups with WeHUB Messenger and engage.
See y’all later in Seattle and here in Atlanta.
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