By NYU Staff

Its promise is simple: The best stories, the biggest fans. BallHype.com, a sports news Web site, delivers this promise by scouring the Internet for the best of sports news and videos and posting it alongside user-submitted material.

With just three staff members, BallHype works along the lines of Digg. Its users vote on their favorite stories, and those stories get placed on the front page. What’s more, users can send articles to be considered for posting on the site.

BallHype is owned by Future U.S. — an international media group with a portfolio of magazines, web sites, and now Blips. Future U.S. has been launching Blips, or algorithmic aggregation and discovery sites, since summer 2008.   There’s no clear definition of a blip, but think of it as a blog that forms to aggregate news about one specific topic, like baseball. In a way, it’s Future U.S.’s term for a niche blog.

BallHype is one such Blip. With its roughly 1.1 million unique visitors per month (according to Traffic Estimate), it proved an enticing bet for Future U.S. The company bought the site last year for $3 million.

So what is all the hype? Well, sports fans are crazy, and they’ll do just about anything to get their hands on info about their favorite teams and players. Any site that can meet those cravings should prove successful.