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Will the Facebook App Center be a Boon to Sports App Developers?

May 10, 2012 by 3 Comments

The list of places that you can go and search for the app that scratches your most current itch has just gotten one stop longer as Facebook has formally launched its latest service that it is calling the App Center.

What makes the site look like it might have real legs is that it is not just focused on one operating system or platform, but rather seeks to be a one stop shop for the Mobile Web, Android and iOS users, and the company said that it believes that it can be the destination site for mobile application users.
A user can view apps, select the one that they want and then download it vie either from the App Store or from Google Play. There is one caveat, the apps have to be designed to be used on Facebook and all apps need to have a Facebook login.

While one of the problems that I have found in recent times perusing app stores is that there are just so many I spend a good deal of time either honing down my search or just reading the specifications of a specific app.

Facebook is seeking to help with this issue by prominently displaying apps that garner solid reviews and ratings from users while dropping ones that continually get poor numbers. In addition it has established developer quality guidelines and apps that do not follow them will also not be displayed.

I wonder if and how sports apps will take advantage of this. Drop by a team’s official web page and you can see how popular it is and how often it gets ‘likes’ I chose the San Francisco Giants and the page has 1.4 million likes. Boy does that give a developer of an app about the team a focused market.

Of course MLB might have something to say about apps being liked on the page, a quick look shows that the huge majority of links on the site are to official MLB sites, but not all of them. This is the same with all major sports but could actually be a better tool for developers looking at niche markets.

Rather than hope a fan of say rugby is going to search iTunes for rugby apps, they could have the app mentioned on a team page with a link to the Facebook App pages. Since this effort is just getting off the ground and the paid app portion is still in beat it will take a while to see if this shakes out well for the app developers in sports and out.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Facebook, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Rugby, Smartphone, Sports Social Media, Sports Social Media Data Tagged With: , , ,

NHL expands Digital Presence for Stanley Cup Playoffs

April 26, 2012 by 3 Comments

We don’t talk that much about the NHL around here, we enjoy hockey but it does seem to generate less social media buzz than other sports, at least around the digital corners I hang out at. Still I found this piece from the Sports Business News interesting about hockey’s latest push into the digital market.

I was surprised at how much activity the league has in regards to using social media for fan interaction, and that is something I will have to keep a closer eye on going forward, but you can still vote for the cover of Electronic Arts’ NHL 13 cover, for instance.

Anyway the league has released a number of offerings that are designed to entice fans as the Stanley Cup approaches, and while the playoffs are already well under way it still good to recount a few of the efforts, even if my team was once again eliminated in the first round.

There is a Daily Digital Video Shorts which calls for the league to deliver videos on the action, twoce a day seven days a week. I wonder if the Hossa hit made the cut? They will be two official releases a day- the “Stanley Cup Countdown,” available immediately after the night’s games are completed, and an afternoon edition that it is calling “Melrose’s Place.” Really?

Then there is NHL Social which is an umbrella effort for its social media including Facebook and Twitter. It said that it has experienced a 211% increase in social followings in the last three years. You can grow a virtual beard in honor of the players’ tradition of doing so with real hair, submit photos for fan photo mosaics, and Locker Room Postcards, a polite way to needle your friends when their team is eliminated.

There is more available and go take a look and see, even if your team has once again been eliminated.

Filed Under: Facebook, Fanatic Fans, NHL, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

ESPN Gameday Contest Draws Fan Interest — Maybe Too Much Interest?

April 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Any but the most casual college football fan has seen the throngs at the ESPN College Gameday sets, with fans in the background hoisting all sorts of signs, occasionally ones that are risqué or outright rude, and during the course of the week we see lots of ads for the program.

Now fans can influence where the ads will be shot in a clever little contest that ESPN and Facebook are hosting that enables fans to vote once a day for their school of choice. The winning school will have a Gameday ad shot on campus and it will include students from that school.There are a total of 120 schools involved and you can vote over at Facebook or ESPN GamedayVote.

I really like the contest on a number of levels. It should generate a great deal of attention between rival schools and rival contests. A quick look at some of the blogs out there already have battle cries that call for votes or else.

For ESPN it just brings additional attention to its football programming, and at a time that it is not usually on the minds of fans. It seems to have already taken off since the ESPN Vote page, and the Facebook one, as of this writing, has been overwhelmed and are down while it verifies the votes. I suspect that it will just get busier before this is all over.

The one flaw seems to be that the powers that be underestimated the popularity of the program. Looking at some of the posts on the Facebook page I noticed both accusations of cheating and complaints that votes were credited to the wrong team. I have to say that if I was in school and knew a hacker I might be so inclined to see if I could ‘rock the vote.’

I would really love to know where the votes are coming from, not in terms of schools and conferences, but are more voters coming from the Facebook page or the ESPN site? ESPN’s Facebook page has one million followers and so can be a tremendous force in this contest.

Filed Under: Contests, ESPN, Facebook, Fanatic Fans, NCAA Football, Social Media, Sports Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Are Facebook and Microsoft Teaming up Against Google?

April 24, 2012 by 2 Comments

Yesterday Microsoft sold $550 million worth of patents to Facebook. The deal is somewhat surprising since just days earlier Microsoft had spent $1 billion on those and other patents when it purchased them from AOL.

Why not let Facebook simply purchase them from AOL itself? As Facebook’s $1.1 billion purchase of Instagram showed the company does not lack the resources to go out and quickly make a high dollar deal.

Well the devil is in the details and it looks like the two giants are looking to use this deal to help immunize themselves from at least a portion of the patent lawsuit virus that seems to be plaguing hi tech these days.

Facebook gets approximately 645 of the 925 AOL patents that Microsoft acquired, but it also gets a license to the rest of the patents that Microsoft owns and Microsoft has a license to use the patents that it just sold to Facebook.

Microsoft said that this enables it to recoup half of the cost of the deal will still achieving its goal of having unfettered access to the AOL patents. However the New York Times, among others, positions the deal as a tool that will also help the two against Google.

Google increasingly competes with both companies with everything from Google Plus to free apps. With its purchase of Motorola Mobility it will have a significantly enhanced patent portfolio as well. It really looks like the conflict between the Microsoft/Facebook alliance against Google could get heated.

Filed Under: Apps, Facebook, Google, Lawsuit, Microsoft, Motorola Tagged With: , , ,

London Olympics Creates Online Social Hub for Athletes and Fans to Mingle

April 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you are looking to follow your favorite athletes at this year’s Summer Olympics, the governing body has just set up a system that will enable you to do just that with both famous and those that hope to soon to be famous.

The International Olympics Committee has set up a site called the Olympics Athlete Hub, an effort that hopes to enable fans to make connections with the athletes that are participating in this year’s games as well as past performers.

What the hub does is simply aggregate the Twitter and Facebook feeds of the athletes and provide a single unified spot that brings them all together. A quick look over at the page shows that currently three of the five players are American NBA players.

Once you sign up you can search the athlete directory by athlete name, country, sport, discipline or event. There already 1,000 athletes in the hub and this will grow as qualifying for events is ongoing and as athletes qualify they will be added. There are also former Olympiads such as Mark Spitz, Nadia Comaneci, Edwin Moses, Yelena Isinbaeva, and Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, who pass along tips on training.

Users of the service can post photos and also win prizes for liking athletes on Facebook and following them on Twitter, and the site is expected to roll out a number of additional award programs leading up to the games, including one that can send the winner to the games.. During the games the site will feature a section that will feature real-time chats with athletes that will take place from within the Athletes’ Village.

It really seems that the Olympics as an organization truly understand the advantages of social media as well as the reach and power that a major on-line presence brings. With its broadcast partners making all events online and highlights that can be followed on YouTube it is certainly much easier to follow the contests easier than possibly any other sporting event in the world.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, BBC, Contests, Facebook, NBC Sports, Olympics, Social Media, Sports Social Media, YouTube Tagged With: , , ,

The Atlanta Hawks Social Hub- Where Fans Gather

April 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

With the NBA playoffs just around the corner here is wishing that your team is angling for a better seeding for the games rather than for the lottery. While looking around the league I was struck by how easy it was to use the Hawks Social Hub, a nice mixture of new and older technologies.

Right next to the banner headline of ‘Hawks Social Hub’ are six icons for popular news and social media feeds such as YouTube and Twitter, but really that is just a tease. Directly below are two large boxes, one with the latest Facebook posting and a link to Facebook, as well as a invite to join a contest to win 4 free tickets.

Across is a box with the Twitter feed, and you can follow the team at @atlanta_hawks and the site touts that you can follow all of the Hawks social media at one place, here at the Hub. Beneath this box are three slightly smaller boxes.

The first is a link that takes you to the teams YouTube channel for videos. The second is the teams official blog, with one of the current conversations discussing its playoff picture while the third box covers its Google + feed.

Below all of this are two buttons, one for users that wish to see additional video and the other is for those who like to comment on message boards. This is just the front page of the Hub. It has pages for fans looking to buy team merchandise, get stats, buy tickets, look at cheerleaders and more.

The sponsors for the page are quite clear as well, showing that the team understands how to partner with advertisers. The Georgia Lottery is the page’s sponsor and others can be found on the page, but not really to a point where they are obtrusive.

This is a great example of how a good page, incorporating all of the different forms of social media can really make it easier for fans to follow their teams. For any traveler that has been in a city far from home waiting patiently while the local sports channel or ESPN to finish scrolling through all of the games that you are not interested in to get to the one that you do care about, now there is a much more efficient method of catching up.

Team pages vary a great deal, which in one way is good, it enables them to highlight what they believe their fans are most interested in. On the other hand it can make finding the information of connection you want difficult to find. Just head over to a different teams page and try finding Google + or YouTube videos. On some they are not present and others very difficult to find.

Filed Under: Atlanta Hawks, Facebook, Google, NBA, Social Media, Social Media Data, Sports Social Media, Twitter, YouTube Tagged With: , , , ,
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