BallHype Launches – Sports Fanatics Will Love This

BallHype, a new sports news and social networking site, came out of closed beta tonight and launched.

The site has a lot of Digg-like features. Users can add sports stories and other users vote those stories up or down, and add comments. Unlike Digg, though, categorization is very important. Sports fans generally care about local teams, or focus on one league. So BallHype allows L.A. Lakers fans to zero right in on relevant content. Or they can focus on L.A. sports in general instead.

BallHype also allows users to add friends and create groups (and other basic social networking features), so local fans can be in touch with each other.

Actual games are also displayed, and users can leave comments on those pages. Users can also vote for who they think will win, and gain points for correct guesses. If the winner is an underdog, more points are awarded.

The BallHype home page is customizable by the user to include local sports, game stats, etc.

BallHype has a long list of advisors to the company, including Matt Watson of USA Today and Gabe Rivera at TechMeme. A demo video of the service is here.