MTV's college-aimed offshoot mtvU is expanding a program it began last year with Cisco, offering grants to students who come up with innovative digital media applications, reports MediaWeek.
The "Digital Incubator" program gave away five $30,000 grants to ambitious student groups. As a result, mtvU will launch Hit! or Sh!t, a social media ranking platform that allows users to build a profile, then rate snippets of content. Ratings launch "Hits" to the top while "Sh!tty" ones line the bottom.
mtvU hopes to use the service to launch new bands, the same way MySpace leveraged its musically-inclined demographic to develop a record label.
In Digital Incubator 2.0, this year's program, the stakes are slightly higher. mtvU is awarding a $100,000 grant to a student group with innovative savvy. One such that appears to hold promise is called RapHappy, a Web-based recording platform for aspiring hip-hop artists.
