By Nigel (Technology Editor)

We were really excited to find out this week that we have been selected to go on Web Mission 08. Web Mission is a showcase of the best UK internet start-ups. There were over a hundred entries and we were selected as one of the 20 start-ups to participate. Some of the other companies such as WAYN (which was rumored to have a price tag of $200m) and TIOTI are really big names so we were pretty surprised to be selected. TechCrunch is covering the event.

Anyway, I’ll be over in San Francisco on April 19-25th hopefully taking in the Web 2.0 Expo.

Here is the press release we issued this morning:

News Prediction Website, Hubdub.com, selected for Web Mission 2008

Hubdub.com, the news prediction website, is selected to take part in Web Mission 08, a prestigious showcase of the best of the UK’s internet start ups to be held in Silicon Valley next month.

Edinburgh, UK – March 10th, 2008 – Hubdub.com is one of 20 UK companies hand-picked to attend Web Mission 2008, a new initiative set up to enable successful UK-based entrepreneurs to build relationships with influential people in Silicon Valley and explore possible future opportunities.

Launched in January 2008, Hubdub allows users to make predictions on the outcomes of news events and to challenge their friends in fantasy league style competitions. Unlike other news sites, Hubdub only tracks news that users think is worth creating a question on, such as “Will Obama be the next President of the United States?“, “Will Microsoft successfully acquire Yahoo?” or “Will Trace Adkins win Celebrity Apprentice?“.

“Hubdubbers”, as Hubdub users have started to call themselves, can not only create such news-related questions and stake Hubdub dollars on them, but they can also set up their own personalised leaderboard to compete against their friends. Co-founder, Nigel Eccles explains, “We’re bringing the thrill of fantasy sports to politics, entertainment and general news junkies”.

Being chosen for Web Mission is an exciting opportunity for the young company, founded in Edinburgh in November 2007. It will give them access to a vast font of Silicon Valley knowledge, from investors to other start ups, journalists to high growth success stories.

Eccles is thrilled, “We launched Hubdub at DEMO 08 in Palm Springs just six weeks ago, so this really is a golden opportunity for us to return to the States to show what we’ve achieved since the launch, and to pick the brains of some very impressive people. I’m delighted to be part of it.”

Since launching at DEMO 08, Hubdub has garnered a substantial and loyal following, with around 50,000 unique visitors to date. Some users are spending several hours a day on the site, with many of them confessing to a definite Hubdub “addiction” on the site’s forum.

“We’ve been blown away by the response from our members”, admits Eccles. “We’ve had more visitors than we could have possibly hoped for, and the quality of the debates they’re having is staggering. People are so competitive on the site - I’ve even had some members email me asking me to close their account because it is too addictive!”

Hubdub is mainly focused on the US market for now, although it has strong regional categories covering news and predictions from the UK, Europe and further afield.

About Hubdub
Founded in November 2007 by Nigel Eccles, Tom Griffiths, Rob Jones and Chris Stafford, Hubdub is headquartered in Edinburgh, UK. For more information, visit http://www.hubdub.com.

About Web Mission 2008
Runs from 19-25th April 2008, in San Francisco. For more information, visit http://www.webmission08.com

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  By Nigel

Three weeks ago today we launched Hubdub into public beta at DEMO. DEMO was an amazing event, the organization was slick and there were some great companies launching there are as well. It was an honor to be there launching with them. It is difficult to really pick one or two out as the selection was so diverse. Tech Confidential did a great write up listing all the companies in order of best investment opportunities (well we particularly like it because it placed us third!)

Off the launch we managed to get some great PR online, in print, on radio and even on local TV. We put together a sample of some of the press coverage on our Press page. A big thanks goes to Miiko Mentz and Brian Solis from our PR company, Future Works, who did such a fantastic job. Thankfully when the TechCrunch surge hit the site held up. Like a lot of start-ups we have found that TechCrunch drives a ton of traffic however the engagement and conversion levels are much lower than other traffic sources. All in all however, we’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much of the initial surge we have retained. Thanks again to all the journalists that covered us.

After DEMO we travelled up to Silicon Valley and San Francisco to suck up the vibe and meet up with lots of people. We managed to meet up with some seasoned entrepreneurs who gave us excellent advice (my measure is how many pages of notes do I take in a meeting - these guys are all four pagers plus). Steve Larson, at Krugle, is I believe on his fifth start-up so knows a thing or two about them (and also advised me to walk instead of taking a taxi, I’ve never had an American suggest that to me before!). We also caught up with Mark Fletcher, formerly of Bloglines and now at Startupping, who previously knocked out development at Hubdub for a day after a late night bender with the team in Edinburgh! Finally, we managed to see Dave McClure of 500 Hats who in passing introduced us to Kiva which is a great service that lets you lend money to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

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